>>> What the the hell business does the Royal Navy have fiddle-farting
>>> around in Iranian/Iraqi waters?
>>
>> Either spying, or trying to provoke an incident, no?
Jordan replies
> Er, they are there under a UN mandate, UNSCR 1723.
But the grounds for scepticism are historic.
Commander Lionel "Buster" Crabb went missing during a dive off Portsmouth in April 1956, the year of Suez and the Hungarian uprising, amid claims that he had been spying on Soviet ships during the visit of the USSR's leaders, Nikita Khruschev and Nikolai Bulganin.
The admiralty were going to try to say that Crabb had been testing new diving equipment, but a memo released under the fifty year rule written by WH Levin, head of naval law, five months after Crabb's death reads: "If this came out ... it would not seem to square very well with our statement that Crabb had been out of the navy for over a year at the time of his death."
i.e. the Soviets' suspicions were correct: Crabb had been spying on their ships when he drowned, hence the cover story.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,,1932682,00.html