(Associated Press Photo)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rather than tangle with a stronger U.S. military, Iran is poking and prodding its Western antagonists in ways apparently designed to avoid triggering war but that nonetheless seem to heighten the risk of missteps and miscalculation that could lead to an armed conflict with global consequences.

The tensions picked up Friday with Iran reporting it had seized a British-flagged oil tanker in the Persian Gulf , one day after the U.S. said it destroyed an Iranian drone that had flown within threatening range of an American warship in the Strait of Hormuz. In June the Iranians shot down a U.S. Navy drone in the same area, prompting President Donald Trump to authorize a military strike on Iran, only to call it off at the last moment .

Trump's response to the latest escalation in the Gulf captured both the urgency and the unending difficulty of dealing with the Islamic Republic.

"Trouble, nothing but trouble," Trump told reporters when asked about Iran's Revolutionary Guard saying it had seized a British tanker.

From Iran's point of view, the real trouble is Trump, who withdrew the United States last year from a 2015 nuclear deal that offered new hope for Iran's faltering economy.

The British government said two vessels had been seized by the Iranians, but Iran later said the second ship had departed Iranian waters. The Iranians said the seizure was in response to Britain's role in impounding an Iranian supertanker two weeks earlier.