Wednesday 19 June 2019

Why is there no image of the Iranians actually planting the limpet mines?

I'm really not sure why the now-departed US defence secretary Patrick Shanahan ordered another 1,000 troops to the Middle East before he packed up his goods and left the Pentagon to spend more time with his family. Neither the US nor Iran wants a war of any kind. So what is the point of sending an extra 1,000 troops? They will no doubt help to provide more protection by supporting the surveillance and reconnaissance operations going on over the Gulf. But it also increases the perception that the Pentagon is gearing itself up for a military strike. One irresponsible Republican senator, Tom Cotton, is pushing Trump to bomb Iran as soon as possible in retaliation for the oil tanker attacks. Bomb what exactly: Iranian oil installations perhaps? I'm not in any way sympathising with the ayatollahs and the gross Iranian Republican Guard Corps, the mischief-makers of the Middle East. But every time the Pentagon announces new troop deployments or more warships the impression is given that the US is planning something. If Iran attacked the tankers, as seems pretty clear, they deserve to be punished. But not, I think, by some burst of firepower. There are other ways of punishing Tehran. Avoid conflict at all costs. Trump agrees and has even, bzarrely, downplayed the oil tanker attacks by calling them "minor". The huge plumes of fire and smoke coming out of the vessels would suggest otherwise. But every time things seem to be calming down, good old General Kenneth "Frank" McKenzie, commander of US Central Command, pops up and ask for more troops and firepower. Shanahan agreed almost immediately and spoke about deterrence and the need to believe the "very credible" intelligence he had seen about who was behind the tanker attacks. Basically, Trump and co need to get their intelligence stuff sorted out and presented in full to the international community so that there are no longer any doubters and then get UN backing for non-military retaliatory action. The trouble with intelligence, however, is that unless the US has got actual real-time pictures of Iranian frogmen slapping limpet mines on the side of the tankers or have underwater images of an Iranian submarine firing a torpedo at one of the vessels - which presumably they don't - then it's quite tricky to be absolutely absolutely sure that Iran is guilty. The US does have images of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps fast attack boats milling around one of the tankers but the pictures were taken two hours AFTER the explosions. Then there is the grainy image of the Iranians trying to remove an unexploded limpet mine from a tanker hull. But that was ten hours after the explosions. It doesn't mean they didn't plant the mine in the first place. But removing a mine is not quite as totally convincing as an image showing them actually planting it on the hull. Why, one might ask, with so many surveillance drones, reconnaissance aircraft and helicopters around isn't there a picture of the dastardly dead itself. So General McKenzie, it's all very well you wanting more and more troops to fly to the Gulf but how come your chaps already there didn't spot the Iranians doing what they patently did?!

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