July 20, 2019 "Information Clearing House" - Hubris is usually a forewarning of impending calamity. Extreme arrogance blinds the hubristic person to the limits of their power. So, blindly, they push on with reckless excess, leading to potentially disastrous results.

The US and Britain are exemplars of this kind of mad hubris in the present mounting tensions with Iran.

After Iran seized a British cargo ship this week in the Persian Gulf, Britain’s foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt condemned the Iranian action as “unacceptable” and warned that Tehran is “choosing a dangerous path”.

American President Donald Trump also rebuked Iran. “We have the greatest ships – the most deadly ships, we don’t want to have to use them,” he said to reporters Friday at the White House. “We hope for their [Iran’s] sake they don’t do anything foolish. If they do, they will pay a price like nobody’s ever paid.”

Britain is claiming that Iran’s impounding of a British-operated ship is unlawful and violates “freedom of navigation”. Iran said it seized the vessel after it collided with an Iranian fishing boat and disobeyed safety regulations for passing through the narrow Strait of Hormuz.

Whatever the exact circumstance are, London has very little legal or moral authority to remonstrate with Iran. Tehran says it is carrying out an investigation into the alleged infringement by the British ship. Iran has the sovereign right to do so.

As for the official British reaction, it smacks of downright hypocrisy. An Iranian oil tanker is currently detained in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar after Royal Marines boarded the vessel on July 4 and took it into custody over claims it was transporting oil to Syria – allegedly in breach of European Union sanctions on Damascus.