Two Tanker Ships Bound for Japan Attacked Off the Coast of Iran; Hyundai Ship Rescues Crew
The attacks on these ships just happens to occur while Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is visiting:
Two oil tankers were damaged in a suspected attack off the Gulf of Oman early Thursday, prompting the rescue of dozens of crew members.
The U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet told Reuters it was assisting two tankers in the Gulf of Oman after receiving two distress calls. Details of the incident were unclear, but one of the operators made an unconfirmed report that a torpedo had hit its ship, Reuters reported.
“We are aware of the reported attack on tankers in the Gulf of Oman. U.S. Naval Forces in the region received two separate distress calls at 6:12 a.m. local time and a second one at 7:00 a.m.,” Joshua Frey of the Fifth Fleet said. The Fleet did not blame anyone for the attack.
One of the vessels involved was identified as the MT Front Altair, a Marshall Islands-flagged but Norwegian-owned crude oil tanker carrying naphtha, a petrochemical product, to Japan.
Fox News
A South Korean Hyundai ship based in Dubai actually rescued the crew of the Front Altair.
The obvious play here is that the Iranians attacked these ships because they did not like whatever message they received from Prime Minister Abe on behalf of President Trump. The Iranians have long threatened to shut down the Straits of Hormuz and cause world oil prices to surge and this is a reminder of that fact.
Gooks up to no good in the Gulf of Tonkin… er… I mean… towelheads in the Gulf of Oman.
History doesn’t repeat itself… but it rhymes.
Gulf of Tonkin was staged by the US to justify Vietnam involvement…so maybe history will repeat. https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2008/february/truth-about-tonkin
Staged is the wrong word, embellished for the purpose of justifying a wider war is probably a better way to describe it. Done through a series of lies, half truths, and lies by omission to concoct a narrative that fit their purpose of justifying their military adventurism. This was the icing on the cake of bad global political decisions starting during and at the end of WW2 let to the disastrous US war in Vietnam.
Another article….with a rather fitting conclusion:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/05/robert-s-mcnamara-and-the-real-tonkin-gulf-deception/
“The deeper lesson of the Tonkin Gulf episode is how a group of senior national security officials seeks determinedly through hardball – and even illicit — tactics to advance its own war agenda, even though they knew the President of the United States was resisting it.”
So many suspects to choose from:
Chinese
Iranians
the US military industrial complex
Who will end up being responsible for dragging us into the next war?
Anyone know the legality of having the US Navy make examples of any smaller ships approaching tankers in the Strait of Hormuz?
Would this be a decent way of avoiding a large scale land based conflict? Something along the lines of: we can’t prove who did this, but anyone coming within a certain limit of commercial ships under our protection will be fired upon.
I suppose whoever is doing it could just heavily mine the strait so there would be no one caught red handed.
There’s a strong temptation to tell the Saudis to police their own back yard; but I doubt their capabilities, even with F-35s. And I say that with all due respect.
Who cares who did it?
The issue isn’t “who did it”… the issue is how America gets rid of 22 trillion in debt.
A great option is a variation of World War… where, as always, loser pays.
And despite the efforts of the Russian sentementalists, Chinese wishful-imperialists , EU aspirational-commies, assorted incapible camel-humpers in a superiority bubble, various misguded towelheads trying to recapture a distant past, and scattered Islamaboos who have no sense, America currently has 11 carrier strike groups that are whispering “the time is now before it is too late”.
So.
Well.
Need more be said?
I’m not a fan of so-called “limited war”. All that means is more agony and death and no solution.
If we’re to go to war, we should go all-in. If we’re not willing to win, we shouldn’t risk American lives. If we are willing to go all the way, we need to kill the people who roll bandages, pack parachutes, and change the oil for the rnemy troops. There are no “innocent civilians” in any war. If they pay taxes to the enemy, they’re a military target.
No more Koreas,Vietnams, Afghanistans, Iraqs, or Syrias. Either we follow Lemay’s advice* or we stay home.
I don’t think Trump is a wuss for not starting a war without a National demand for the enemy’s hide tanning on the back fence.
* “If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.”