Some U.S. Allies Balk at Blaming Iran for Tanker Attack
Conflicting accounts of the incidents in the Gulf of Oman stir further confusion in an increasingly volatile region
AMike Pompeo speaks from the State Department briefing room in Washington on June 13. Win McNamee/Getty Images
A day after two oil tankers were attacked in the Gulf of Oman, some U.S. allies were reluctant to join the Trump administration in forthrightly blaming Iran for the incident as conflicting accounts emerged, adding an element of uncertainty to the rising tensions between Washington and Tehran
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration was quick to blame Iran for the Thursday attacks, which targeted a Norwegian-owned and a Japanese-owned vessel carrying petroleum products in the strategic chokepoint through which much of the world’s oil travels. The U.S. Defense Department released black-and-white video footage purportedly demonstrating that Iran is behind the attack, but some of the United States’ allies have held back from explicitly blaming Iran so far—including Japan and Norway. For its part, the Iranian government denied the U.S. accusations that it was involved
U.S. Central Command took the unusual step of releasing footage of the incident, which it says shows Iranian special forces removing an unexploded mine from the side of one of the oil tankers damaged in the incident, a few hours after the attack. The Japanese owner of one of the tankers contradicted the account put forth by the U.S. military, saying the vessel was struck by a flying projectile and not a mine or torpedo, adding further confusion
After the U.K. government conducted its own assessment, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on Friday backed up Centcom’s account, saying in a statement that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was “almost certainly” behind the attacks and calling on Tehran to “cease all forms of destabilizing activity.”
But other U.S. allies, which have parted ways with Washington over its withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, haven’t gone as far and appear to be treading carefully around a potentially explosive diplomatic standoff between Washington and Tehran. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the video evidence isn’t sufficient by itself. “The video is not enough. We can understand what is being shown, sure, but to make a final assessment, this is not enough for me,” he told reporters on a visit to Oslo, Norway
assessment, this is not enough for me,” he told reporters on a visit to Oslo, Norway.
Some U.S. allies may not “want to be seen as bandwagoning with a U.S. administration that may be seen as a loose cannon on this,” said Michael Eisenstadt, an expert on the region at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank. “They’re going to want to wait until their intelligence agencies get from the American intelligence community our assessments and forensics,” he said. “They’ll want to have their own intelligence people look at the ships before they arrive at their own judgment.”
Eisenstadt said the attack appears to “fit a very tailored pattern with attacks Iran has carried out in the past.”
The conflicting reports of the attacks are stirring further unrest in a region already beset by tensions as the Trump administration ratchets up pressure on the Iranian regime through severe sanctions and diplomatic maneuvering. Trump in April designated Iran’s elite branch of its armed forces, the IRGC, as a terrorist organization, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani hit back by declaring all U.S. troops in the Middle East terrorists. The latest attacks also come after the White House hit Tehran with additional sanctions as part of a so-called maximum pressure campaign to squeeze the regime and sent a fresh deployment of U.S. forces to the region to deter what the administration called “credible” threats from Iran and its proxies against U.S. troops
U.S. acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan emphasized the need to reach “international consensus” on the situation.
“Fifteen percent of the world’s oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz. So we obviously need to make contingency plans should the situation deteriorate. We also need to broaden our support for this international situation,” Shanahan said Friday at the Pentagon
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