Iranian naval forces in the Gulf tried to capture an Australian Navy boarding team but were vigorously repelled, the BBC has learned.
The incident took place before Iran successfully seized 15 British sailors and Marines in March.
The lessons from the earlier attempt do not appear to have been applied in time by British maritime patrols.
The 15 Britons were searching a cargo boat in the Gulf when they were captured over a boundary dispute.
‘Having none of it’
When Iranian Revolutionary Guards captured the British sailors and Royal Marines in March, it was not exactly their first attempt.
It turns out that Iranian forces made an earlier concerted attempt to seize a boarding party from the Royal Australian Navy.
The Australians, though, to quote one military source, “were having none of it”.
The BBC has been told the Australians re-boarded the vessel they had just searched, aimed their machine guns at the approaching Iranians and warned them to back off, using what was said to be “highly colourful language”.
The Iranians withdrew, and the Australians were reportedly lifted off the ship by one of their own helicopters.
The circumstances for the Britons in March were slightly different in that they were caught so much by surprise that, had they attempted to repel the Iranians with their limited firepower, they would doubtless have taken very heavy casualties.
But military sources say that what is of concern is that the Royal Navy did not appear to have taken sufficient account of the lessons of the Australian encounter.
In an oblique reference to the threat from Iran, Britain’s First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, has recently admitted there was a need for greater strategic awareness in the northern Gulf.
"Surrender, my /-$$! When perps try to grab you, you go berserk, totally, uncontrollably, frighteningly, totally crazy BERSERK. You use every possible resource at your disposal to maim, cripple, kill, blind, and otherwise make life intolerable for the perp. This is the reason you practice timed draw and fire at very small targets. This is why you study all possible opponents and understand their history, their methods, their capabilities and where the devil they are at and where they are not at. This is why you carry surprises, train, stay clean, sharp and ready. There could be no such thing as "total surprise" on the open waters, so part of the team needs to be on watch while the rest of the team does their search thing. And if there are not enough people on the team to post a working watch, then shame on their commander because (s)he's a butterfly-brained twit with incomplete training, no imagination, and a serious lack of supervision for the subordinate teams. If the problem is lack of proper equipment to protect themselves then shame on their entire command.
And, yeah, i'd volunteer to take the commander's place any day, for no pay, and by damn my teams would not be caught napping or taken hostage by any gd /-$$#ol3 pirates who just got a couple of shoulder-fired missiles through the glass of their gd bridge and a few rounds of .30cal down the barrel of their cocked-'n-locked deck guns! Watch those big irons explode when their rounds tried to get past the melted, wedged lead of a .30cal slug lodged against the side of their outgoing round! So maybe it would start a war? WTF does anyone think this $#1t over there is anyway? This damn so-called low conflict $#1t was tailor made for pirates and revolutionaries to wear down the established power. Like us. So why cater to their tactics. Bloody their damn noses and they'll eventually back off. If they don't, then step up the intensity until they do. It's called escalation of force, and we seem to have forgotten that concept, what with all the crybaby pandering politicians, /-$$#ol3 lawyers, gooders with cameras and pens, and lackeys of the enemy howling every time some perp uses a civilian shield and the shield gets sacrificed to the cowardice of the perps. Our soldiers get court-martialed for smoking some speeding incoming car at a checkpoint that for all anyone knew was an incoming bomb of the day when in fact if was some un-announced ally who had just bought a hostage out of captivity and was hauling-/-$$ for the Green Zone without letting the check point know. Where's the justice there? The whiners and gooders bawl and blow snot all over the place when some civilian shield of the perps gets sent to valhalla, but when 8 of our soldiers get blown to pieces with a cowardly "low conflict" roadside IED supplied by the Iranian government, you only hear "8 soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb.", and then on to some lengthy report of yet another hollywood twit that did something else totally brainless, and then on to some politician setting up a system where they can totally disarm the American citizens. So where is the logic in all this, and where did the historical values of this nation go? We keep going in this direction and we'll have a damn site shorter history than the Roman Empire did.
And that's more than enough of my ranting for one day. 👿