It’s official: The US is blaming Iran for Thursday’s incident in the Persian Gulf.
Mike Pompeo made the announcement in a briefing, during which he said concerns would be raised at the UN Security Council.
The attacks crippled a pair of oil tankers, sent oil prices surging and marked the second such episode in a month. That one of the tankers was Japanese-operated is notable, considering the Trump administration had implicitly blessed Shinzo Abe’s planned efforts at diplomacy.
The president appeared to retract the third-party olive branch on Thursday afternoon. “While I very much appreciate PM Abe going to Iran to meet with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, I personally feel that it is too soon to even think about making a deal”, Trump tweeted. “They are not ready, and neither are we!”
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In his press briefing, Pompeo went on to say that Tehran is attempting to disrupt the flow of oil, which is obviously true. But he also said Thursday’s attacks “should be understood in the context of 40 years of unprovoked aggression”. While you can surely find instances of “unprovoked” Iranian aggression if you go back four decades, this isn’t one of those instances. Washington has been poking Tehran in the eye with a sharp stick for 14 months. Maybe Mike has a short memory.
To suggest the Trump administration didn’t “provoke” Iran in this scenario is so laughable that one struggles to understand how a US Secretary of State could say it with a straight face. That is until you remember that Mike Pompeo is, in fact, America’s top diplomat, and then it makes complete sense.
Pompeo and John Bolton have been angling to put the US in direct conflict with the Iranians for quite a while. That push got so aggressive recently, that Trump himself reportedly became alarmed at how quickly the situation was escalating.
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Just to dispense with the usual cacophony of false flag conspiracy theories, Iran is almost certainly responsible for Thursday’s attacks. Trump has backed Tehran into a corner and now the IRGC is hitting back. You can expect further reprisals orchestrated by the Quds in Iraq and Yemen.
Obviously, direct, armed conflict between the US and Iran is an unthinkable proposition. You could argue that Pompeo has some inkling of that. Bolton, on the other hand, has a long history of giving projected casualties the short shrift. Consider this excerpt from an April article in The New Yorker, for instance:
In fact, Bolton has believed for decades that these are the only two choices. In the early two-thousands, as the Bush Administration was negotiating to limit North Korea’s nuclear program, Bolton stridently advocated war. Wilkerson, Powell’s chief of staff, was so concerned that he brought Bolton into a private meeting on the consequences of military strikes: “I gave him a ten-minute brief on what a war with North Korea would look like–a hundred thousand casualties in the first thirty days, many of them Americans. The Japanese that would die. The Chinese that would die. The fact that Seoul, one of the most modern and forward-looking cities in the world, would probably be reduced to the Dark Ages. I told him, ‘That’s Passchendaele, John. That’s Ypres.’ ”
He said that Bolton was unmoved: “John looked at me and said, ‘Are you done? Clearly, you do war. I don’t do war. I do policy.’ ”
In the same profile, Dexter Filkins notes that “people who have worked with Bolton say that he is focused less on North Korea than on Iran, where his vigilance can sometimes seem out of proportion to the apparent threat.”
That’s an attribute John shares with Pompeo, and it’s dangerous when the president isn’t capable of making an informed decision of his own accord.
So, as Trump would say, “we’ll see what happens.” For now, there will apparently be no reprisals, but you can bet Bolton was on the phone this very day asking someone at the Pentagon for an update on military options.
Pompeo ignored the Iranian denial of responsibility as Rouhani is obviously not as credible and trustworthy as Putin or Kim. No doubt Netanyahu is sitting there saying “I told you so”, that’s why you need to vote for me again and ignore the indictments. Or am I being too cynical?
no, i mean, this is a case where the false flag thing isn’t entirely unrealistic (whether re: the Saudis or the Israelis), but my point is simply that Occam’s razor applies: the simplest answer is that Iran is furious and they’re flexing their muscles in the Strait just like they said they were going to do. obviously they’re not going to admit to sabotage, but this is, in fact, something they’d definitely do. so, it’s not that “false flag” is silly in this case (as it is in almost every other case), it’s just that i don’t think you need it to explain what happened.
Having served in a war in service to the economy and oil profiteers, this is a false flag in my opinion. It is a stupid premise that Iran would wear identifying clothing to remove a evidence (the un-exploded mine). We are a country of meat heads if we buy that bull shit. Further when Pompouseo attempts to disarm with we do not want or need a war, that is all part of the con.