With the US having signed off on another 1,500 ground troops being sent
to the Middle East, some justification is needed. A top Pentagon
official is relying on previous speculation to make this all look very
official.
Vice Admiral Michael Gilday told reporters that the US has “very high
confidence” that recent sabotage of oil tankers off the coast of the
United Arab Emirates was done by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. He also claimed rockets recent fired ib Baghdad were fired by “Iranian proxies.“
All previous indications were that they didn’t have a very good idea who
was behind the sabotage, and couldn’t rule out non-state actors, so
they didn’t pursue the allegation. Blaming rockets on “Iranian proxies”
is much simpler, since the US considers wide swathes of the Iraqi
government security forces to be such proxy forces, and it wouldn’t be
shocking if it was such a group.
Yet these are all, again, allegations that were too flimsy when they
actually happened in the past few weeks for the US to publicly make a
big deal out of them. It is only now, as escalation moves forward, that
officials are falling back on them as the best they can do to justify
continued buildup toward a war with Iran.
US Blames Iran for Gulf Tanker Sabotage, Iraq Rocket Attack
Vice Admiral tells reporters US has 'very high confidence' of allegations
Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.
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