Regardless, the Iran shipment seizure isn't complicated at all.
- The UK seized an Iranian tanker that was passing through their waters near Gibraltar to get into the Mediterranean. The UK says it was bound for Syria and intended to break sanctions. This is entirely possible.
- The Iranians said explicitly that they would seize a British flagged vessel in response.
- After a few days, the Iranians seized a British flagged vessel on the grounds that its GPS wasn't reporting properly and it was slightly off course. This is entirely likely, since that kind of shit happens constantly, but you don't normally impound vessels for that kind of minor infraction unless you are looking for a reason to do so (which the Iranian government had already previously stated it was).
Impounding the original Iranian ship may have been "correct" in the sense that it may indeed have been intending to break Syrian sanctions. I don't know, but that story seems superficially plausible as there are
lots of smuggling ships bringing things into and out of Syria right now and it's no stretch of the imagination that one of them might have been flying an Iranian flag or traveling from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.
However, it's important to note that being "in the right" in international disputes counts for somewhere between "diddly squat" and "fuck all." In order to impound a ship and get away with it, you need to be able to either flex your military muscles and get the other party to back down or call in enough diplomatic favors to get other countries to convince the other party to take the loss. It does not appear that the UK has access to either of those as post-Brexit England.
First of all, the United States under Trump flagrantly broke all their deals with Iran and walked away for no actual gain. This removes all leverage the US has at any hypothetical diplomatic table with Iran. Iran is totally uninterested in
anything the Trump administration has to say about anything at all. The UK's special relationship with the US may or may not be in jeopardy over the rise of fascism in both countries, but it doesn't much matter for this particular conflict because the amount of diplomatic pressure the US can bring to Tehran is
zero.
Secondly, the UK's remaining main allies are mostly Europeans. But Theresa May has spent the last 2 years alienating and annoying Europe and the incoming prime minister BoJo has threatened to be more overtly antagonistic to European allies. What diplomatic capital is France or Italy willing to burn on England's behalf right now?
This isn't an example of a proxy war, it's just England testing her strength and finding that she has none.
-Username17