Iraq News Now

Confusion surrounds the attack on the two tankers in the

Gulf of Oman on Thursday, with the stricken ships ablaze just south of the

Strait of Hormuz and their 44 crewman rescued by the Iranian navy.

Precisely what weapons were used to cripple the Japanese and

Norwegian-owned tankers is unclear, although it has been reported on US

television that eyewitnesses saw shell-like projectiles before one of the ships

was struck above the waterline.

Predictably, following the incident, the global price of oil

spiked by 4.5 percent, due both to the lingering uncertainty about the nature

of the attack and the fact that it is the second such outrage in a month,

following the May 12 incident in which four ships were damaged off the coast of

Fujairah.

But while the foreground remains murky, the background is far

clearer. Despite their expected denials, there is little doubt that Iran lies

behind the attack, either directly or through the sponsorship of its Houthi

militia allies, fighting Saudi forces for control of Yemen.

Simply put, Tehran had the motive, means, and opportunity to

perpetrate the crime. And the Iranians always act for a reason.

From Tehran’s perspective, there are reasons a-plenty for

staging the attacks, as Iran’s fragile economy becomes ever-more constrained by

American sanctions and the “maximum pressure” the Trump administration is

bringing to bear on the republic.

The timing of yesterday’s attack is particularly suspect.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — who is both personal friends with the

volatile Trump while still maintaining a good relationship with the Iranian

leadership — is presently on a mission to Tehran, where he is attempting to

defuse the increasing tensions between the US and Iran.

Striking a Japanese-owned tanker while Abe is attempting to

negotiate some sort of rapprochement between the two countries is an especially

effective way for hard-liners in the Iranian government — think the Iranian

Revolutionary Guards leadership who both economically and politically benefit

from the conflict — to derail any effort to defuse tensions.

But at a broader, strategic level, this slow-moving crisis

already has a sort of inexorable logic. On May 8, 2018, Donald Trump overturned

the key foreign policy legacy of the Obama administration, declaring US determination

to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

(JCPOA).

Scorning the accord, the Trump administration made clear that

it had no intention of trying to woo Iran, to bring it in from the geostrategic

cold, using trade and a relaxation of sanctions to entice it to behave as a

status quo power and to halt its nuclear program.

Rather, the Trump administration views the JCPOA as the

dangerous result of the Obama administration’s wishful thinking. Instead, the

president and his senior advisers feared that continuing with the accord would

lead to an economically strengthened Iran, now with debilitating sanctions

removed, which could patiently out-wait the rest of the world.

Within the course of a generation, and without straying from

the terms of the agreement, this economically emboldened Tehran would instead

simply resume its nuclear program once the JCPOA’s time limits ran out, and

waltz into the nuclear club with few questions asked.

Determined to avoid this happening, the White House has

dramatically altered US policy on Iran, returning it to its traditional

post-1979 stance of animosity. Trump has placed “maximum pressure” on the

Iranian leadership, re-imposing US sanctions, threatening European countries

and businesses (which still adhere to the JCPOA) with the potential loss of

access to the vast US market if they continued doing business with Iran, and

announcing his intent of sanctioning the whole of the Iranian energy industry,

the life-blood of the country.

This latter initiative, even if only partially achieved,

would drive a stake through the heart of the Iranian body politic. With

unemployment running at over 12 percent, growth set to nosedive by 1.6 percent

of GDP in 2018-19, and a further negative 3.8 percent in 2019-20, any further

economic perils could well call into question the continued existence of the

Iranian regime itself.

All this explains Iran’s defiant response. Tehran is hoping

that, just short of war, it can make itself such a nuisance on the international

stage that the Europeans would plead its case with the US to at least halt its

unremitting pressure on the greatly threatened regime.

Iran is illustrating that the price to be paid for its

continued ostracism will be an increasingly high one for the global economy,

since it can disrupt global energy supplies at will while claiming a

semi-plausible deniability.
This is brinksmanship of the first order and signals a major

global political risk for the foreseeable future.

However, while Tehran may think counter-pressure will work

with the anti-Iran hawks in the Trump administration, more likely their folly

will merely confirm the administration in its thinking that Tehran is a

revolutionary power that must be destroyed.