Those who think that Trump was just shooting off his big mouth in a tweet after watching the Fox TV report on Iran this morning, and that he really doesn’t want a war with Iran at this point may be correct.
But even assuming this is true, his tweet gives cover for any commander (already with extensive authority to take action based on their own judgement of threat) to interpret all sorts of ostensible “harassment” as an excuse to “destroy” Iranian ships. Which of course would lead the Iranians to retaliate. All U.S. naval vessels in the Gulf are vulnerable to Iranian land-based missiles. Forget torpedos and rockets launched from fast moving ships. The tweet was — in the best case — dangerous posturing.
Of course there are powerful interests that have long wanted war with Iran. Elements in the Military-Industrial complex, the Israelis, U.S. Oil interests now fed up with Saudi unwillingness to cut production to zero to raise oil prices, imperialist geo-strategists who know a war in the Gulf will hurt China most, etc.
Trump probably does not personally want a war (it may hurt his election prospects), but he has doubled the number of our troop and navy personel in the Gulf, and by unilaterally tearing up the international agreements with Iran and killing the Iranian #2 leader, he has set the stage for a bloody and unnecessary catastrophe.
REMEMBER THE GULF OF TONKIN. The stakes in Vietnam were mainly ideological and based on our desire not to “lose face” in the Cold War. We always want to be the “tough guy.” But the U.S. had no business or real national interest fighting that war. Our real interest would have led us to work with the nationalist HoChiMinh from the earliest days of his struggle against French colonialism, to encourage him to take a line like Tito (which he certainly was open to).
Obama was right that we need to take a giant step back from taking sides in the Sunni/Shia Saudi/Iranian divide. Trump must act and not just talk about stopping “endless wars” in the Middle East. The oil in Syria belongs to Syrians, not us. We ought to pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan ASAP. We should stop our own provocations in the Gulf, and withdraw our navy buildup. We should express our willingness to re-enter and renegotiate our treaty obligations with Iran. In light of the Coronavirus pandemic, we should end secondary sanctions against countries that wish to buy oil from Iran immediately, ending especially our abuse of supposedly neutral and private SWIFT banking communication systems which prevent even crucial medical trade with Iran.
Our own disgust with the Iranian regime is shared by many Iranians, but our policies leave little room for opening breeches in the Iranian political system through which Iranian pro-democratic patriots can pour themselves to overthrow the theocracy.
Given the geo-political reality and the powerful dark interests who actually are willing to gamble on war, nobody should believe anything they read or hear about the U.S. being “harassed.” In any case, none of this is an excuse for starting a shooting war!
Iran is in desperate shape and its theocratic regime has been driven into a corner. But the U.S. is not threatened by Iran, just as we were not threatened by our old ally Saddam or by HoChiMinh. The U.S. is now carrying out de facto extraordinary war sanctions against Iran and may bring bloody destruction upon them in the near future, entirely disrupting oil shipments from the Persian Gulf. This will — very conveniently for the U.S. empire — raise oil prices to save our otherwise non-competitive already bankrupt domestic fracking and export oil industry, and hurt China (and virtually all our competitors other than Russia).