British Surrender Imminent...

...so says DEBKA:

The statement by a senior British defense official Sunday, April 1 is fraught with broad implications: He said: “We are quite prepared to give the Iranians a guarantee that we would never knowingly enter their waters without their permission, now or in the future.”

The Blair government’s willingness to offer Iran a guarantee never to knowingly enter its waters is a blow to this partnership and American interests in the region. It means that Tony Blair is going off in his own direction, heading for negotiations with Tehran and a ransom deal for the 15 hostages that would potentially place British naval and marine strength on an exit course from the Shatt al-Arb. Only a month ago, the Royal Navy doubled its deployment in the Persian Gulf, Sea of Oman and Arabian Sea, to match the arrival of the US nuclear carrier Stennis and its naval, air and marine buildup.

Of course, the British now would be unable to participate in any offensive against Iran to contain their nuclear ambitions, a tremendous victory by the mullahs:

The fruits plucked out of the sea with the British sailors could not be sweeter for Tehran. The British will have to ease out of the task they undertook to secure the sea routes to southern Iraq and its southern oil installations. This extra burden will devolve on the United States.

The guarantee never to enter Iranian waters will exclude Britain from any potential Western military action against Iran’s nuclear installation and further accelerate the British military pull-out from southern Iraq.
DEBKAfile’s Tehran sources report the radical Revolutionary Guards and president Mahmoud Ahmadnejad are celebrating their successes. By a single move, they have planted a wedge in the heart of the Western alliance ranged against Iran, helped boost crude to a six-month high, as well as humiliating Britain. Now, they are considering ways to capitalize on their success by follow-up coups.

Mark Steyn considers the hostage episode as an overwhelming defeat for the British, the EU, and the UN:

On this 25th anniversary of the Falklands War, Tony Blair is looking less like Margaret Thatcher and alarmingly like Jimmy Carter, the embodiment of the soi-disant "superpower" as a smiling eunuch.

....the 15 hostages are "British subjects." But, as a point of law, they are also "citizens of the European Union."
...if Europe is as it claims to be, what's it going to do about it?''
Short answer: Nothing.
....Europe has more economic leverage on Iran than America has. The European Union is the Islamic Republic's biggest trading partner, accounting for 40 percent of Iranian exports. They are in a position to inflict serious pain on Tehran. But not for 15 British servicemen. There may be "European citizens," but there is no European polity.

So what's the U.N. doing about this affront to its authority and (in the public humiliation of the captives) of the Geneva Conventions?
Short answer: Nothing.
....the Security Council instead expressed its ''grave concern'' about the situation. That and $4.95 will get you a decaf latte. Ask the folks in Darfur what they've got to show for years of the U.N.'s "grave concerns" -- heavy on the graves, less so on the concern.

The U.N. will do nothing for men seized on a U.N.-sanctioned mission. The European Union will do nothing for its "European citizens." But if liberal transnationalism is a post-modern joke, it's not the only school of transnationalism out there. Iran's Islamic Revolution has been explicitly extraterritorial since the beginning: It has created and funded murderous proxies in Hezbollah, Hamas and both Shia and Sunni factions of the Iraq "insurgency."

And as of today, the Iranians are still "explicitly extraterritorial"; except the territory they are eyeing is ours - from Iranian news services:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Sunday that arrogant powers will vanish like "bubbles on water."

Addressing local residents after a visit to Mishdagh, a center of operations during the war, Ahmadinejad said that April 1 (Farvardin 12) was an auspicious day as on this day 28 years ago the Islamic Republic of Iran was born.
The Iranian nation, in a referendum held in late March 1979, made the historic and decisive choice of voting for the establishment of an Islamic Republic system in the country, paving the way for a glorious future for themselves and, hopefully, for the entire world, he told his audience.

Consider us warned.