The best argument that the British Ministry of Defence could come up with was very thin: they claimed to have been a mere 1.7 nautical miles within Iraqi waters when their sailors and marines were seized by the Iranian forces. This is hardly a resounding statement of innocence. You can be sure that Britain would not stand idly by if hostile Iranian naval forces were cruising that close to British territorial waters.
What’s more, experts note that the borders here are "murky" and "change with the seasons", as the BBC commented, and have not been updated since the 1975 boundary agreement. Richard Schofield, an expert in international boundaries at King's College London, told the BBC that "Releasing the co-ordinates wouldn't necessarily help us as there is no formally agreed boundary." In this light, a 1.7-mile dispute is almost irrelevant in deciding who was "right", but examining a few technical details can reveal a little about official errors, innocent or not.
Britain has made much of their claim that after Iran issued a GPS location of the incident, they then corrected it with another one. But it appears Britain did the same thing.
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