REPORT: Saudi Oil Tankers Attacked by ‘Iran or Iranian-Backed Proxies’
Shane Trejo
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Yesterday, it was reported that Saudi oil tankers in the Gulf were targeted in a series of ‘sabotage attacks.’
The Islamic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia claims that these were “acts of sabotage which targeted commercial and civilian vessels near the territorial waters of the United Arab Emirates.”
Iranian officials have denied any complicity in the attack, but the corporate media is assigning the blame upon them. CBS News has reported that ‘Iran or Iranian-backed proxies’ are responsible for the attack, according to an unnamed U.S. source.
NEW: Iran or Iranian-backed proxies used explosives to blow holes in four ships — two Saudi oil tankers and two others — near the Strait of Hormuz, according to an initial assessment of the U.S. team sent to investigate, @CBSDavidMartin confirms.
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) May 13, 2019
The Associated Press reported that the U.S. official spoke to the media under the cover of anonymity in an apparent breach of protocol.
The AP also noted that “American officials have not provided any details about what exactly happened or any proof as yet about the possible Iranian involvement in the explosions.”
This comes a week after national security adviser John Bolton presented a plan to Trump administration officials to deploy 120,000 to the Middle East in case Iran would decide to “attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons,” according to a New York Times report.
The attack fulfills a prediction made in an intelligence report shared to Bolton from the Israelis, who claimed that Iranians were planning to target U.S. interests in the Gulf with some kind of attack. This prompted Bolton to threaten the Iranians “with unrelenting force.”
“We are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or regular Iranian forces,” Bolton said.
This “sabotage attack” may be the catalyzing event that Bolton and other hawks in the Trump administration have been waiting for in order to finally draw the U.S. into a war with Iran, a long-time neoconservative policy goal.
While U.S. and Israeli intelligence point to Iran as being the likely culprit for this attack, they also made similar pronouncements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the build up to a war that President Trump has called “one of the worst decisions in history.”
Trump was elected as President in 2016 in part because he ran against the Iraq War and unnecessary military interventions abroad. A war in Iran, with the trillions of dollars and countless lives it would inevitably cost, would be a pivot that may harm Trump’s re-election chances in 2020.
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