Last weekend, a group of 15 British sailors and marines -- part of the occupation forces in Iraq under U.N. auspices -- carried out a routine inspection of an Indian merchant ship in the Shatt al-Arab waterway separating Iraq from Iran.

As the British personnel set out to return to their own vessel in small boats, two Iranian gunboats approached, signaling friendly intentions. But then four more gunboats, armed with machine guns and rocket launchers, joined the first two. The British forces, surrounded and outmanned, surrendered.

The Iranians are now enjoying the kind of bizarre publicity field day that seems to make sense only in the Islamic world, where showing Westerners in any position of weakness or disadvantage seems to trigger a wild excess of candy-throwing celebration. Is this the way the Lilliputians felt after the unconscious Gulliver washed up on their shores and they managed, through mighty labors, to temporarily tie him down?

The British personnel, including 26-year-old Leading Seaman Faye Turney, the mother of a 3-year-old child, are now paraded in front of video cameras and that footage widely broadcast (in violation of the Geneva Conventions, as the British ministry correctly points out), along with supposed "confessions" that the British were "trespassing" in Iranian waters.

Iran even delivered satellite coordinates, as supposed proof of their claims.

"We pointed out to them on Sunday in diplomatic contacts" that the Iranians' own coordinates put the incident well inside Iraqi territorial waters, Vice Admiral Charles Style, deputy chief of the British defense staff, said Wednesday.

The Iranians, after sucking their thumbs and looking puzzled for a day, sent the British a revised set of coordinates Monday, moving the incident back into Iran's waters.

"It's hard to understand a legitimate reason for this change of coordinates," comments Admiral Style, drily.

Although there is no evidence Seaman Turney is Islamic, she is shown in the Iranian videotapes wearing an Islamic head scarf. Should Western governments start putting captured enemy servicemen on display dressed in chaps and cowboy hats, or perhaps ruffled tutus and dancing slippers?

All week Iranian government spokesmen have held out what they must imagine is the tantalizing promise that Seaman Turney alone (because she's a woman?) might be released -- but they then rescinded their offer, insisting the British had not yet "apologized" and admitted wrongdoing.

One pictures a gleeful child encouraging a dog to jump up and grab a biscuit, each time raising it slightly out of reach.

Prime Minister Tony Blair responded by freezing diplomatic relations and seeking a U.N. Security Council condemnation. (The United Nations on Thursday expressed "grave concern." That'll teach them!)

Such behavior is nothing new for the Iranians. They paraded a separate group of blindfolded British sailors before the TV cameras in 2004, and even Americans with short memories can recall the storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in November 1979, as part of the religious coup that overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

Some 70 Americans were held hostage in that embassy for 444 days in blatant violation of any semblance of international law, helping to bring down the ineffective presidency of Jimmy Carter, thus setting the pattern of Democratic diddling and hand-wringing in the face of radical Muslim provocations which -- many would argue -- eventually emboldened our enemies to plot the terror attacks of Sept. 11.

Yes, Iran has some reason to be testy these days, given international pressure to curtail its development of nuclear weapons. But this incident was clearly manufactured with malice aforethought. Analysts in London say the swiftness and coordination of the capture suggest a premeditated attack -- an international kidnapping, pure and simple.

Probably Mr. Blair is right: it's unwise to get drawn into a war by someone else's bravado and miscalculation, and on their schedule.

But no matter how gentle the dog, if it does not want to be saddled and used as a pack mule, it must eventually turn and bite.