And So It Begins: Iran Blamed For Attack On Saudi Oil Tankers – Pentagon Plan Would Send “120,000 Troops To The Middle East”

If President Trump can be convinced that Iran was behind the attack, he will probably want to “send them a message”

By Michael Snyder | Economic Collapse Tuesday, May 14, 2019

As if on cue, a mysterious attack on oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz has brought us to the brink of an apocalyptic war in the Middle East.

On Sunday, four commercial vessels in the Persian Gulf, including two Saudi oil tankers, were seriously damaged in deeply disturbing “sabotage attacks” that immediately sent shockwaves across the entire Middle East. Nobody took responsibility for the attacks, and at first nobody was being blamed, but now an “initial U.S. assessment” is pointing a finger at Iran. The following comes from the Wall Street Journal…

An initial U.S. assessment indicated Iran likely was behind the attack on two Saudi Arabian oil tankers and two other vessels damaged over the weekend near the Strait of Hormuz, a U.S. official said, a finding that, if confirmed, would further inflame military tensions in the Persian Gulf.

The assessment, while not conclusive, was the first suggestion by any nation that Iran was responsible for the attack and comes after a series of U.S. warnings against aggression by Iran or its allies and proxies against military or commercial vessels in the region.

And an article in the Daily Mail had some more specific details about the U.S. assessment…

An American military team’s initial assessment is that Iranian or Iranian-backed proxies used explosives Sunday to blow large holes in four ships anchored off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, a U.S. official said Monday.

The official said each ship has a 5- to 10-foot hole in it, near or just below the water line, and the team’s early belief is that the holes were caused by explosive charges.

So here we go.

If President Trump can be convinced that Iran was behind the attack, he will probably want to “send them a message”.

And if Iran strikes back militarily, events may begin to spiral out of control very rapidly.

On Monday, before we knew the outcome of the U.S. assessment, Trump directly threatened the Iranians…

President Donald Trump threatened Iran with a “bad problem” Monday following news that Saudi Arabian oil tankers were sabotaged near the Persian Gulf.

“It’s going to be a bad problem for Iran if something happens, I can tell you that,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office. “They’re not going to be happy.”

Asked to clarify what he meant by a “bad problem,” Trump responded: “You can figure it out yourself. They know what I mean by it.”

It seems so crazy to think that we could soon be at war with Iran, but events seem to be rapidly pushing us in that direction.

Even before the attacks on the oil tankers, U.S. officials had already come up with a plan to possibly send “up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East”. The following comes from Axios…

At the direction of national security adviser John Bolton, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan last week presented top White House national security officials with a plan to send up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East in the event that Iran “attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons,” the New York Times reports.

Details: The plan was reportedly presented during a meeting about the Trump administration’s broader Iran policy, attended — among others — by Bolton, CIA director Gina Haspel, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

The New York Times pointed out that a similar number of troops were used when the U.S. invaded Iraq.

But Iran is not Iraq. The Iranians have a military force that is vastly superior to what the Iraqis had at that time, and Iran has also developed weapons that possess immense destructive power.

From a strategic standpoint, the worst thing that the U.S. could do would be to stage 120,000 troops in just a handful of locations directly across the Persian Gulf from Iran. Rather than just sit there and wait to be invaded, the Iranians would likely strike the bases where our troops are being staged. With the weapons that the Iranians now possess, the losses would be absolutely catastrophic.

Let us hope that nothing like that ever happens.

If the U.S. just sends air and naval assets into the region, the Iranians will probably not act rashly. But if the U.S. actually decided to deploy 120,000 troops, the Iranians would definitely consider it an existential threat, and they would use everything at their disposal to survive.

Iran has been planning for this conflict for many years, and the U.S. should not rush into such a war without seriously considering the consequences.

Surprisingly, even the British are urging caution…

‘We are very worried about the risk of a conflict happening by accident, with an escalation that is unintended really on either side,’ Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned.

‘Most of all, we need to make sure we don’t end up putting Iran back on the path to renuclearization. Because if Iran becomes a nuclear power, its neighbors are likely to want to become nuclear powers. This is already the most unstable region in the world, and this would be a massive step in the wrong direction.’

We are truly living in apocalyptic times, and it isn’t going to take much to take peace from the Earth.

One more thing – if the U.S. goes to war with Iran, the Iranians have already promised to hit Israel extremely hard in response.

And if Iranian missiles start flying at Israel, the Israelis will hit back even harder.

Both sides possess weapons of absolutely immense power, and so we could be talking about death and destruction on an apocalyptic scale.

Nobody should want to see such a war, because that would be the kind of war that nobody wins.



Leaked Pentagon Plan Calls For 120,000 Troops To Counter Iran

It's unclear whether Trump himself has seen, or been briefed on, the plan. Asked about it, Trump said "we'll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it would be a very bad mistake."

By Zero Hedge Tuesday, May 14, 2019

As Michael Pompeo travels to Brussels to discuss the Iranian threat amid a flare-up in tensions that has brought the US to the brink of an armed conflict, the New York Times has published details from a confidential military plan presented to top national security officials that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or start ramping up work on nuclear weapons (something it has promised to do if its European partners don’t meet their commitments under the Iran deal).

Though the revised plan – it had been modified to incorporate suggestions from John Bolton – doesn’t include plans for a land invasion, it does reflect “the influence of Mr. Bolton, one of the administration’s most virulent Iran hawks, whose push for confrontation with Tehran was ignored more than a decade ago by President George W Bush.”

It’s unclear whether Trump himself has seen, or been briefed on, the plan. Asked about it, Trump said “we’ll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it would be a very bad mistake.”

Here are a few key details from the plan according to more than a half-dozen senior administration officials who spoke with the NYT:

The 120,000 troops called for in the plan would be close to the size of the force that invaded Iraq in 2003. The reversal of the US troop presence in the region under Obama and Trump has reportedly emboldened leaders in Tehran and the IRGC that there’s no appetite in the US for a war with Iran. Deploying this many troops would take weeks or months.
The most likely trigger for a US military response is still an attack by the IRGC The guard’s fleet of small boats has a history of approaching American Navy ships at high speed. Though the plan includes provisions for a US response if Iran once again starts stockpiling nuclear fuel. If Iran does start stockpiling enriched uranium again, the US would have more than a year to formulate a more coherent response, since it would take at least that long for Iran to stockpile anything close to enough to fashion a weapon.
Cyberweapons would be used to paralyze the Iranian economy during the opening salvo of the conflict, in the hopes that this would be enough to cripple Iran before any bombs were dropped. Such an operation would call for “implants” or “beacons” inside US networks. Though, given Iran’s increasingly sophisticated cyberweapons, such an attack would still pose “significant risks.”
This is not the first time since joining the administration that Bolton has sought updated plans for an invasion of Iran. Though it’s widely believed that the president remains opposed to such an incursion. Bolton requested an update after Iranian-backed militants fired three mortar shells into an empty lot on the grounds of the US embassy in Baghdad.
One of the options offered up as a proportional response was a strike on a Iranian military facility that would have been “mostly symbolic.”

While a war with Iran still seems unlikely, if Iran starts stockpiling enriched uranium again as it has threatened to do, it could give Bolton and his fellow neocons exactly the opening they need to successfully push for a military intervention.