UK General: No Sign of Increased Threats From Iran or ‘Proxies’

The narrative of an “increased threat” posed by Iran and its proxies across the Middle East is being used to justify a US military buildup and a general escalation of tensions in the area. British Maj. Gen. Chris Ghika, however, has raised serious doubts about that.

Maj. Gen. Ghika said that there has been “no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces,” despite the claims from US officials, mostly Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. Perhaps more damningly, Ghika says he does not believe there is any daylight between Britain’s assessment of “no increased threat” and the assessment from US intelligence.

In other words, the US officials are lying about the intelligence, presumably to justify the growing US buildup and to keep hyping the possibility of a war with Iran. US Central Command, however, angrily shot back contradicting Ghika, insisting his statement runs counter to established US position on the matter.

CENTCOM’s statement is not exactly a refutation of Ghika’s position on UK and US intelligence. Rather, it refers to “identified credible threats” but provides no indication where they came from. It clearly wasn’t intelligence agencies, because the threats were only made available to intelligence agencies after their identification.

Early reports on the “Iranian proxies” allegation suggested it came out of Israel, and that it was built around Israeli officials believing it would make sense for Iran to do that sort of thing to attack the US. This could suggest it was never verified by US or UK intelligence, and was rather just accepted as the official version because it fit with US policy at the time.