Saudi Oil Tankers Sabotaged, Officials Attempt to Blame Iran

With the US military buildup in the area around Iran, hawks both within the administration and elsewhere in the region suspect that it might not take much to sucker the US into starting a war. Something oil tanker related might do it.

A pair of Saudi oil tankers have been reported to have been “sabotaged” off the coast of the United Arab Emirates. What actually happened is unclear. Officials are only saying sabotage and not elaborating on what happened to the ships or how.

Officials are investigating, however, and with all the talk of undermining international security, the public is meant to suspect that the Iranian government did it, whatever “it” actually was, because the US has been warning Iran that they’d better not do something.

Iran is denying having anything to do with it, with a top Iranian MP saying that the explosions at the port could’ve been carried out by saboteurs from a third country interested in instability. The UAE has denied that the explosions took place at all.

Trump has threatened to see Iran “suffer greatly” for anything else that they do, and other US officials say they definitely suspect Iran. They just can’t prove Iran actually did anything, which might be a problem.

One US official was quoted by Reuters as saying this is “the sort of thing you could see Iran doing.” That seems to be the sum total of the evidence pointing to Iran’s involvement, but it also seems plenty for the officials.

Indeed, when recognizing that they don’t have physical proof, and Iran denied doing it, the official said that the “most obvious explanation” was that Iran was lying in the denial to try to throw people off.