Fresh off their announcement yesterday, the Pentagon has accompanied four US-flagged cargo ships and a British ship through the Strait of Hormuz, the first such accompaniment in what officials say is a new policy.
The Pentagon says that in addition to accompanying US ships through the strait, they are in talks with several countries on accompanying their ships through the waterway, partially controlled by Iran, as well.
The Pentagon announced the accompaniment strategy yesterday, after a brief panic earlier this week on false rumors that Iranian warships had captured a US cargo ship.
In actuality, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard seized a Marshall Islands-flagged ship because of a court order related to an unsettled debt between Iran’s ports authority and the ship’s owners.
Even though the one-off ship seizure was related to actual legal proceedings, and had nothing to do with the US, the Pentagon seems to be dramatically ratcheting up tensions over it, another pretext to add US naval assets to the Iranian coast.
I hear a distant rumble. It sounds like war drums heading for Iran…