Pars Today

In his article for Asia Times, titled “The Instigators of a Persian Gulf Crisis”, Rannie Amiri has focused on the real perpetrators of the tanker sabotage in the Gulf of Oman.

Recent weeks have seen tensions between the United States and Iran soar, initially after a May 2019 incident in which four commercial vessels were struck in the Gulf of Oman (two Saudi oil tankers, one Norwegian and an Emirati ship).

These tensions have ebbed thereafter and escalated yet again when a similar attack took place one month later on the Japanese Kokuka Courageous and Norwegian Front Altair tankers, also in the Gulf of Oman. Tellingly, when it appeared the war rhetoric had subsided after the first incident it quickly ratcheted up, and by several degrees, after the second, as if the May episode had failed to achieve its goal.

Although Iran denounced the tanker sabotage by pointing at suspicious elements trying to fish in troubled waters, it was blamed for the tanker assaults, that is, according to Saudi King Salman, his Heir Apparent the murderous Mohamed bin Salman (MBS), US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton, albeit by unclear means and for dubious reasons – in view of all these said persons open hatred of Iran.

It did not take long for doubts to surface as to why Iran would attack a Japanese tanker while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in the midst of a state visit to Tehran in an attempt to mediate between it and Washington. The suspect authenticity of a grainy video released by US Central Command purportedly showing an Iranian patrol boat removing a supposedly unexploded limpet mine from the tanker also raised skepticism (the crew indicated they were hit by a flying object, not a mine).

Putting sloppy, poorly designed "evidence" aside, recent history makes clear who the vested parties keen to stoke a manufactured hostility between Iran and its neighbors are. Indeed, one such actor – the Zionist regime – has for decades used a comparable strategy of deliberate provocation to justify vicious military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, not unlike the agitation Iran is experiencing today.

The Israeli tactic has always been to make conditions so unbearable, intolerable and unsustainable that a response of some kind by the affected group becomes inevitable. Whether it had been to starve and strangle Gazans by a stifling land, sea and air blockade and in effect imprison its population (who then responded by firing symbolic, fertilizer-based rockets) or the nearly two-decade long occupation of southern Lebanon to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization and then Hezbollah, the approach has always failed but not without great civilian casualty.

In both cases, acts of resistance to Zionist provocations were used as pretext for subsequent aerial bombing and military operations, "retaliatory measures" as routinely parroted by the Western media. But Lebanon endured, ultimately ending the occupation and repelling the 2006 Israeli invasion while Gaza remained steadfast despite great hardship.

Currently, the allegation is that of Iran interfering in the internal affairs of its neighbors. The ground realities are different, and it is Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates who – having destabilized Syria and Iraq – are directly intervening in the affairs of Yemen with daily airstrikes which have so decimated the country in an unsuccessful attempt to dislodge the popular Ansarallah Movement that a humanitarian catastrophe has developed. These two states are meddling in the affairs of other Arab states, such as Bahrain, where the ruling Aal-e Khalifa regime has rid itself of the trappings of civil society with dissenters routinely stripped of their citizenship, journalists tortured and peaceful calls for representative government violently put-down.

In Syria and Iraq, the role of al-Qaeda and subsequently of Daesh and similar groups sharing the hatred-filled takfiri ideology with their Saudi sponsors can also rightly be considered an example of unsolicited meddling in the affairs of the two countries by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Remarkably, it is Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain which have been most vocal in accusing Iran of being behind the unrest.

The staggering loss of a life as a result of the so-called caliphate of Daesh and the Syrian war is still being tallied. In Iraq, the insertion of foreign fighters was a means to prevent the rise and stability of a popularly elected government in the post-Saddam era, and in Syria to bring down the government of President Bashar al-Assad because it is an ally of Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Iran has only seen a brief reprieve from sanctions which have significantly impacted its economy, with no proof to date of an overt or covert nuclear weapons program. Additional American troops are now being dispatched near its shores.

Without entertaining the possibility of "false flag" operations in the Gulf of Oman, the states who would like to see a war between Iran and the US unfold are no mystery. As recent West Asian history teaches, the conflicts which have caused the most destruction and devastation have been at the hands of those who wanted to swallow Palestinian land, subjugate Lebanon, topple the Syrian leadership, restore the old Ba’thist guard in Iraq and install a pliant regime in Yemen.

The instigators of the current Persian Gulf crisis, which if to get out of hand would lead to even greater tragedy, are one and the same.

AS/SS