Speaking of Said Geopolitical Tensions Seemingly on Every Hand, it's not just the United States of America Spoiling for a(n inevitably major) Middle East Confrontation/'Clash of Civilizations', Evidently...

No, the geopolitically significant modern-day nation of Iran, successor (many millennia on) to the once great and glorious second major world empire of Medo-Persia, itself seems to have suddenly assumed - some would say legitimately enough following on from continually ratcheted up provocation from the likes of the Trump Administration's Mike Pompeo and John Bolton - about whom Trump's made no bones, over recent weeks, as to their hawklike tendencies -

the role of *agent provocateur...vis-a-vis British oil tankers in the Gulf in particular....

But where will it all end, any reasonable person must ask, if not in a rather cataclysmic war for one and all?

*Obviously meaning 'agent of provocation' in this context, though admittedly my beloved Chambers Concise Dictionary (Cambridge:1988) gives a somewhat different definition.