The assertion, in the absence of evidence, that Iran is responsible for yesterday’s attacks, should not be believed. Iran has no motive to attack oil tankers, but the Trump Administration has plenty of motives to blame Iran.
Yesterday morning,
two oil tankers were attacked with explosives in the Gulf of Oman. One was the
Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous; the other was Norway’s Front Altair.
Not a lot of reliable information is out yet – sources disagree as to whether
the weapons were torpedoes or limpet mines, and whether the ships sank, or were
merely abandoned after catching fire.
In
conclusion: Iran had no motive to attack the oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman.
Other people did have motives to do so. And the Trump administration definitely
has motives for blaming Iran – but don’t bet on Mr. Trump moving on to open
hostilities, because if it came to war, America stands to lose.

There
also isn’t any agreement as to who did it. Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State,
immediately blamed Iran, saying that no one else in the region has the ability
to carry out such a sophisticated attack. Iran vociferously denied it.
All of this raises an important question: why would
Iran do such a thing? The State Department’s assertion that Iran was
responsible provides no evidence and no motive, only repeating old accusations of
“forty years of aggression against freedom-loving nations.”
But since I believe that evidence and motive are
important in solving mysteries like this one, I will write a little about why I
believe that Iran isn’t responsible, describe three other possible perpetrators
that did have a motive to commit the attacks, and, finally, discuss the
Trump Administration’s motive for blaming Iran.
Iran’s main foreign policy goal is to be left alone
by the United States – something that is easier said than done. For instance, it
took years of negotiating with the Obama Administrating to get JCPOA, a promise
of sanctions relief in exchange for an end to Iran’s uranium enrichment. But
since the deal was never ratified in the US Senate, President Trump was able to
rescind it shortly after taking office. This prompted outbursts of anti-American
anger in Iran, and the centrifuges were turned back on. Unsurprisingly, the Trump
administration is acting as if Iran is the aggressor.
If it still seems like Iran is overreacting, just
remember that when the US government imposes sanctions on a foreign country, it
doesn’t just ban Americans from trading with that country, it bans everybody
from trading with that country. You may remember how Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese
corporate executive, was arrested in Canada last December, at the United States’
request, for the crime of trading with Iran.
The originalists in my audience may recall that the constitution
does not give Congress power to regulate commerce between foreign
nations, but that was back in 1787. Nowadays, America is Emperor of the World, constitution
be damned.
And blaming the oil tanker attacks on Iran makes no
sense when one considers that one of the tankers, Kokuka Courageous, was
owned by Japan, a country whose prime minister was in Tehran at the time,
discussing ways to circumvent the American sanctions. Why would Iran attack one
of the few countries that is willing to stand up for its rights?
And in case any of my readers have misconstrued my
previous post about how the United States would lose a war with Iran, I will repeat
that I meant “lose” in the sense that, if war broke out, the Iranians would
keep their independence and inflict more damage on America than the Americans are
willing to bear. But the majority of casualties, especially civilians, will
still be Iranians. Iran has no incentive to make itself the aggressor in a war
that would get millions of its people killed.
Having explained why I believe that Iran is not to
blame, the question becomes one of who actually has a motive to attack
those tankers? In other words, cui bono?
It could simply be ordinary middle eastern
terrorists. Perhaps they were funded by Iran, though they certainly weren’t
taking orders from the Iranian government. Perhaps they were funded by Saudi Arabia.
They would have been acting out of general anti-western sentiment, driven by
anger over foreign involvement in the middle east, rather than any sort of
coherent grand strategy.
On the other hand, it could have been a conspiracy
on the part of oil speculators to drive up the price of crude. Oil futures
surged 4 percent on the day of the attacks, and investors with their money
leveraged properly would stand to make a huge profit.
Or it could have been a false-flag attack by the US
to gain a pretext for war with Iran. While I am listing this as a possibility,
I don’t believe that it is more likely than the other two.
What, then, is the State Department’s motive
for blaming Iran? Inertia is part of it: enmity with Iran has been a staple of
US foreign policy for decades, and old habits die hard. Also, it gives Donald
Trump an opportunity to look tough, by breathing out threats against Iran should
the aggression continue.
Mike Pompeo and John Bolton are war hawks who want
an increased American presence in the middle east. Even if they can’t convince
Trump to invade Iran – and at this point I think that they can’t, because Trump
knows better than to start the next Vietnam War – they’re still on the lookout
for reasons to escalate things and deploy more American forces near the Iranian
border.
Finally, the media coverage of these events – in which
President Trump gets to be the good guy for a change – is a welcome relief from
the constant focus on his administration’s domestic scandals and failure to
secure the border.

The most painful thing to watch about Mr Trump is not his crude insults and gaffes, but his stumbling about in the realm of foreign policy. He appears to have some of the right instincts -- exactly WHY is the American mlitary getting put in harm's way in the various inter-tribal wars of the Middle East? -- but has no developed ideological alternative to the Carry-on-the-Cold-War program of the Washington Foreign Policy Establishment. There is now enormous potential for a patriotic, non-interventionist policy to become popular among the American people, both Democrat and Republican and independent. But there does not yet seem to be a politician with stature on the Right -- our equivalent of Tulsi Gabbard -- who can give it focus. But one is certain to appear.
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