Will Persian Gulf 'Tanker War' Become a Shooting War?

[drbrumley]

Will Persian Gulf 'Tanker War' Become a Shooting War?
Ron Paul

The UK got a taste of its own medicine this week as Iran seized a British tanker, the Stena Impero, just two weeks after UK Royal Marines seized a tanker near Gibraltar carrying two million barrels of Iranian oil. As could be predicted, the US and UK media are reporting Iran’s seizure of the Stena Impero as if it were something out of the blue, pushing the war propaganda that “we” have been attacked and must retaliate. Media criticism of the UK is limited to claims that it has not put enough military into the Persian Gulf, not that it should never have seized the Iranian ship in the first place. The truth is, the UK seizure of the Iranian ship was calculated to force Iran to retaliate and thus provide the pretext the neocons need to get their war. As usual, Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton is in the thick of this operation. Bolton Tweeted that he was so surprised – but pleased – by the UK move against the Iranian tanker. However it is becoming clearer that Bolton was playing a role behind the scenes pushing London to lure Iran into making a move that might trigger the war he’s long been yearning for. The ramping up of tanker wars comes just as the Pentagon has announced that it will send 500 US troops to Saudi Arabia – the first such US deployment since the US withdrew its troops in 2003. At that time, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz hailed the move out of Saudi Arabia as denying al-Qaeda one of its prime recruiting tools – US troops in their holy land. What will 500 troops do in Saudi Arabia? Some say they will help prepare the Prince Sultan military air base for a possible US air squadron deployment. We must be clear on how we got to the very edge of war with Iran. President Trump pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) promising he would exchange it for a much better deal for the US. He quickly re-applied all previous US sanctions on Iran and demanded that our allies do the same. The US policy would be to apply “maximum pressure” to Iran which would result in Iran capitulating and agreeing to all US demands. US economic warfare against Iran would bring the country to its knees, the Administration claimed, and would deliver a big win to the US without a shot being fired. But the whole plan has gone terribly wrong. Iran did not back down or beg for mercy in the face of Trump’s actions, and the Europeans have at least attempted to keep the JCPOA agreement alive. And the UK following neocon orders has led the country in a serious and unnecessary crisis that does not look to be easily resolved. How could the US administration have miscalculated so badly? Many of us could have told President Trump that the neocons always promise a “cakewalk” when they are talking up a military action. Time and time again – Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria – they promise a quick victory and deliver a quagmire. The American people overwhelmingly do not want to go to war with Iran and the president wants to be re-elected. Will he return to the political base that elected him on promises of getting along with the rest of the world, or will he continue to follow his neocon advisors down the road to a failed presidency?

Seems what the never Trumpers couldn't get done, trump himself will do....and destroy his own presidency..

 

[Gary K]

I don't know if I buy into this. Ron Paul usually makes a lot of sense, but I question him on this one. The never-Trumpers were saying all this about Syria too, and look what happened. For all intents and purposes we are out of Syria. Trump reduced any footprint we had there and destroyed some deep state installations in Syria while he was at it. Bolton was going crazy advocating for US expansion there too and Trump never took his advice.

I wish guys like you would study into the CFR and it's origins. What you call neocons are simply member of the CFR who are advocating the same things CFR members have been advocating since it's creation in the very early 1920s by the same group of Woodrow Wilson advisors that he sent to the Versailles Treaty, got him elected, wrote his entire 14 Point Plan for him, told him the cost of getting elected was the Federal Reserve, and put a minder in the White House to make sure he didn't get out of line, Edward House, who wrote the socialist novel Phillip Dru: The Administrator . He's the same man Wilson said he didn't know where he left off and House began. The same team that got Wilson elected with 42% of the popular vote also ripped off the US taxpayer for billions of dollars during WW1 as they charged the government for millions of artillery shells of multiple calibers, howitzers, artillery of all calibers, airplanes, and gun carriages which were either never manufacture or never delivered yet they collected every cent. Members of the same group still do this kind of stuff today. Now there's a story for you.

If you want to see just how dedicated a socialist House was his book The Administrator can still be downloaded from the Gutenberg Project. It describes totalitarianism in detail. And this was the most powerful and influential man in Wilson's administration.

One last detail about this group of men. One of them loaned Leon Trotsky $20 million to fund the Russian revolution. He left the US carrying the money on a ship bound for Russia and the Canadians, knowing he was going there to foment revolution in the midst of WW1 and that Russia was a part of the allies, pulled him off the ship in Novia Scotia. The Canadians didn't want Russia leaving the Allies because it would release the German troops fighting Russia to be sent west to fight the Canadian, US, British, and the rest of the Allied soldiers in Europe. Wilson didn't care. He intervened in favor of Trotsky with the Canadians until they let him proceed on his journey and we know the rest of the story on that. Wilson cared more for the communist revolution than he did the lives of US troops.