According to reports out of the Sunday Times, Britain is set to deploy approximately 100 Royal Marines to the Gulf of Oman in the days to come, with an eye toward protecting British warships in the area.
Officials cited “concern” about mounting tensions with Iran, and noted
that Iran had summoned the British Ambassador to protest Britain blaming
them for last week’s tanker attacks.
Yet this deployment is, if officials are to be believed, unrelated to
those attacks. Rather, they say the deployments had been planned for
several weeks, as part of the general escalation toward Iran, and just
happen to coincide with the tanker attacks.
Iran has denied attacking the tankers, though both the US and Britain
have declared Iran the guilty party. So far, there has been no sign of
any incidents in the region threatening anyone’s warships, and with the
ongoing US escalation, there are a lot more warships in the region than
there normally are.
British Royal Marines Heading to Gulf of Oman to Protect Warships
Officials say deployment was planned weeks before tanker attacks
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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