Of course, Iran attacked the tankers. It used the limpet mines as a way to stimulate just the sort of doubt we see here.
To those who imagine the US did it as a “false flag” operation — get a grip. The US can’t do that, because someone would leak it. It’s that simple.
What Iran did is consistent with what it has done since the Ayatollahs took over: asymmetric warfare. They are lashing out now because the US is trying to force them to not get nuclear weapons, and Iran desperately needs them in order to carry out its long standing aims: create a greater Persia from Iran through Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean, and defeat and conquer the Sunni powers in the gulf, to enhance that greater Persia.
Iran is an unusual beast — a religious dictatorship. What is not unusual is its imperial aims — dictatorships conquer to enhance the power and prestige of the dictator, and fundamentalist Islamic states conquer to spread their version of Islam.
Iran created the Quds Force to wage unconventional warfare, and also to punish those it hates — such as the Jews massacred by Quds operatives in 1994 in Argentina. Iran, which is weak militarily, knows that it must unconventional and deniable means to inflict pain on those it wishes to influence. We see that with Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is armed with an estimated 150,000 missiles whose targets are all in Israel. We see it with the sophisticated weaponry yielded by the Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen, who recently attacked an international airport with an explosives laden precision Iranian made drone, and who attempted to sink a US guided missile destroyer using Iranian supplied anti-ship missiles — 3 times.
Iran waged a tanker war once before, during the Iran-Iraq war. It used mines so that its actions were hard to pin-point, and because its navy had been sunk in one day by the US after that navy attacked tankers.
Iran is a bad actor on the world stage. It seeks to develop nuclear weapons to arm its already existing IRBM’s. It has repeatedly, frequently stated its plans to use those nuclear weapons to destroy Israel. If we let it get nukes, Saudi Arabia will call in its debt to Pakistan and will shortly also have nukes. The world will become a much more dangerous place.
Don’t be fooled by the conspiracy theorists. The US did not plant those mines. The US didn’t fake the video of the Iranian Quds members retrieving the limpet mine that failed to detonate.
Trump doesn’t want a war, but he does not want to allow the failure of his predecessors to stop the nuclearization of Iran. If Iran gets nukes, it will then have a deterrent, and be able to forego its deniable attacks and just plain wage war on Saudi Arabia. It will, like North Korea, quickly develop the ability to threaten the US with an H-EMP attack — a threat for which we have no defense.
The peace of the world requires that Iran be stopped. The “agreement” Iran entered into was just a ploy in order to get sanctions removed, and to get Europe investing in Iran again. This time, we need to achieve a true agreement with actual surprise inspections, including on Iranian military sites. The alternative is horrible to contemplate.
