Several Saudi Oil Tankers sabotaged, blame being turned towards Iran; DOD & EUROPE PLANNING!

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

my spidey senses are tingling on the legitimacy of this...







:sheikhmjpls:


Saudi Arabia Says 2 Oil Tankers Damaged in Sabotage Attacks


Saudi Arabia Says 2 Oil Tankers Damaged in Sabotage Attacks
7-9 minutes


Image

Damage to a Norwegian oil tanker on Monday off the coast of the United Arab Emirates.CreditCreditEmirati National Media Council, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Saudi Arabia’s energy minister said on Monday that two Saudi oil tankers had been sabotaged and sustained “significant damage” off the coast of the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, raising new fears of escalating tensions in the region involving Iran, the two Gulf countries’ avowed enemy.

A Norwegian company reported that one of its tankers, the Andrea Victory, was also damaged in the same area on Sunday; images posted online appeared to show the ship with a ragged gash in its stern at the waterline. The United Arab Emirates said that a total of four vessels had been sabotaged near the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Persian Gulf.

Neither Saudi Arabia nor the United Arab Emirates assigned blame, made public any evidence of damage to their ships, or described the nature of the sabotage.

In a statement, the Norwegian company, the Thome Group, said the crew of its ship had reported that “the vessel sustained hull damage after being struck by an unknown object.” Nobody was hurt, the company added, and the ship was not in danger of sinking.

Though the situation remains murky, even the hint of armed conflict sends shudders through a region already on edge from threats and counterthreats, and through a global economy heavily dependent on the free flow of oil from the gulf. Iran has threatened in recent years to block traffic through the strait, in response to Western sanctions and tensions with Saudi Arabia, but has not followed through.

“We are very worried about the risk of a conflict happening by accident, with an escalation that is unintended really on either side,” the British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, told reporters in Brussels on Monday. “I think what we need is a period of calm to make sure that everyone understands what the other side is thinking.”

The claim of sabotage comes as the United States is deploying an aircraft carrier, bombers and an antimissile battery to the gulf to deter what the Trump administration has said is the possibility of Iranian aggression. The administration contends that Iran is mobilizing proxy groups in the Middle East to attack American forces, though it has not offered any information to support that conclusion, as the United States is ramping up economic sanctions.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went to Brussels on Monday to discuss Iran with European Union leaders, skipping what would have been the first day of a two-day trip to Russia.

The administration recently moved to cut off Iran’s all-important oil revenues by stopping five of the country’s biggest customers from buying its oil. Iranian oil exports had already fallen by more than half under American sanctions over the last several months to under a million barrels a day.

The American pressure tactics are aimed at forcing political change in Iran. Tensions have risen since last year, when President Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear accord that world powers struck with Iran; Mr. Trump reimposed broad sanctions in November.

Iran has swatted back, announcing last week that it would restart the production of nuclear centrifuges and begin accumulating nuclear material again, though without withdrawing fully from the nuclear deal, which China, Russia and the European Union still support.



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The port of Fujairah, in the United Arab Emirates, near where the reported attacks occurred.CreditSatish Kumar/Reuters
Amid the mutual escalations, the United States Maritime Administration had warned on Thursday of heightened threats from Iran in the Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Persian Gulf. It said there was an “increased possibility that Iran and/or its regional proxies” could target oil tankers, other commercial ships or military vessels belonging to the United States or its allies.

The Strait of Hormuz is the world’s most important narrow passage for oil shipments. The United States Energy Information Administration estimated in 2016 that nearly a third of all seaborne-traded crude oil and liquid petroleum products goes through the strait. Exports from major producers like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia move through the strait, so any threat of disruption is likely to alarm oil traders.

Khalid al-Falih, the Saudi oil minister, said in a statement that one of the oil tankers sabotaged on Sunday was on its way to pick up Saudi oil to be delivered to the United States. He said that there were no casualties and that no oil had been spilled.

A Saudi energy official said the matter was “under investigation.”

The Foreign Ministry of the United Arab Emirates said officials were investigating the events, which it said had occurred in the Gulf of Oman off the coast of Fujairah, one of the seven emirates that make up the country.

An international tanker industry organization, Intertanko, said in a statement that its representatives had seen “photographic evidence” that “at least two ships have holes in their side due to the impact of a weapon.”

According to an Iranian state news agency, the Islamic Republic News Agency, a spokesman for the country’s Foreign Ministry seemed to brush away any suggestions that Iran was behind the sabotage, warning “against any conspiracy orchestrated by ill-wishers to undermine stability and security in the region.”

The spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, expressed concern about the apparent sabotage, the news agency reported, saying on Monday that a “regretful incident happened for some ships on Sunday.”

Fujairah, the emirate where the sabotage is said to have occurred, is an important fueling point for tankers and other shipping.

Oil prices climbed by more than 2 percent on Monday in response to the reports, before falling back again.

Any decline in oil shipping and resulting price increases would probably punish Asian importers like China, India, Japan and South Korea the most, but would affect the entire world economy. Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Iran, rely on the strait to ship oil and natural gas exports, making their economies — and even their political stability — heavily dependent on commerce through the passage.

An attempt by Iran to interrupt that flow would injure its own economy as well as invite retaliation.

In economic terms, the United States would be among the countries least affected by an oil disruption: American domestic production has more than doubled in recent years, cutting imports from the Middle East sharply. Europe, like the United States, has strategic oil reserves, and could receive some Persian Gulf oil and gas through Red Sea pipelines and the Suez Canal.

Despite repeated crises in the region, for decades, traffic through the strait has rarely been interrupted.

Clifford Krauss contributed reporting from Houston, and Stanley Reed and David Kirkpatrick from London.

 

[Jhoon]

What does the coward Bolton think?

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

wagging the dog? @88m3 @dtownreppin214

I'm NOT an Iran fan and they DO commit acts of terror and subterfuge and are NOT good actors...

but this shyt seems weak as hell

 

[Json]

This like when someone steps on a person’s Jordans and escalates like a baby was slapped.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

This is interesting...

 

[88m3]

welp

 

[ill]

I think we can solve our middle eastern problems by letting the House of Saud fight the IRGC and let them fully destroy each other. We should lend support to both sides until there are no sides.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

I think we can solve our middle eastern problems by letting the House of Saud fight the IRGC and let them fully destroy each other. We should lend support to both sides until there are no sides.

they tried that in the 80s

 

[ill]

they tried that in the 80s

We can try again

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

What does Iran gain by doing this?

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

What does Iran gain by doing this?

A lot of people ain’t buying it but if Iran did it, it’s a signal of infiltration influence. Weird responses I’m seeing

 

[TTT]

I think we can solve our middle eastern problems by letting the House of Saud fight the IRGC and let them fully destroy each other. We should lend support to both sides until there are no sides.

Don't the Saudis have appetite for an actual fight against a country like Iran, they would probably try to draw other countries in to attack Iran

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

:ALERTRED:





White House Reviews Military Plans Against Iran, in Echoes of Iraq War

​

White House Reviews Military Plans Against Iran, in Echoes of Iraq War
By Eric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes

May 13, 2019

The aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln last week in the Persian Gulf. As a precaution, the Pentagon has moved an aircraft carrier and more naval firepower to the gulf region.U.S. Navy, via Associated Press
WASHINGTON — At a meeting of President Trump’s top national security aides last Thursday, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons, administration officials said.

The revisions were ordered by hard-liners led by John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser. It does not call for a land invasion of Iran, which would require vastly more troops, officials said.

The development reflects 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 is highly uncertain whether Mr. Trump, who has sought to disentangle the United States from Afghanistan and Syria, ultimately would send so many American forces back to the Middle East.

It is also unclear whether the president has been briefed on the number of troops or other details in the plans. On Monday, asked about if he was seeking regime change in Iran, Mr. Trump said: “We’ll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it would be a very bad mistake.”

There are sharp divisions in the administration over how to respond to Iran at a time when tensions are rising about Iran’s nuclear policy and its intentions in the Middle East.

Some senior American officials said the plans, even at a very preliminary stage, show how dangerous the threat from Iran has become. Others, who are urging a diplomatic resolution to the current tensions, said it amounts to a scare tactic to warn Iran against new aggressions.

European allies who met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday said that they worry that tensions between Washington and Tehran could boil over, possibly inadvertently.

More than a half-dozen American national security officials who have been briefed on details of the updated plans agreed to discuss them with The New York Times on the condition of anonymity. Spokesmen for Mr. Shanahan and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to comment.

The size of the force involved has shocked some who have been briefed on them. The 120,000 troops would approach the size of the American force that invaded Iraq in 2003.

Deploying such a robust air, land and naval force would give Tehran more targets to strike, and potentially more reason to do so, risking entangling the United States in a drawn out conflict. It also would reverse years of retrenching by the American military in the Middle East that began with President Barack Obama’s withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 2011.

But two of the American national security officials said Mr. Trump’s announced drawdown in December of American forces in Syria, and the diminished naval presence in the region, appear to have emboldened some leaders in Tehran and convinced the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that the United States has no appetite for a fight with Iran.

Several oil tankers were attacked or sabotaged off the coast of the United Arab Emirates over the weekend, raising fears that shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf could become flash points. “It’s going to be a bad problem for Iran if something happens,” Mr. Trump said on Monday, asked about the episode.

Emirati officials are investigating the apparent sabotage, and American officials suspect that Iran was involved. Several officials cautioned, however, that there is not yet any definitive evidence linking Iran or its proxies to the attacks. An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman called it a “regretful incident,” according to a state news agency.

In Brussels, Mr. Pompeo met with the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany, cosignatories of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, as well as with the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini. He did not speak to the media, but the European officials said they had urged restraint upon Washington, fearing accidental escalation that could lead to conflict with Iran.

“We are very worried about the risk of a conflict happening by accident, with an escalation that is unintended really on either side,” said Jeremy Hunt, the British foreign secretary.

The Iranian government has not threatened violence recently, but last week, President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would walk away from parts of the 2015 nuclear deal it reached with world powers. Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement a year ago, but European nations have urged Iran to stick with the deal and ignore Mr. Trump’s provocations.

The high-level review of the Pentagon’s plans was presented during a meeting about broader Iran policy. It was held days after what the Trump administration described, without evidence, as new intelligence indicating that Iran was mobilizing proxy groups in Iraq and Syria to attack American forces.

As a precaution, the Pentagon has moved an aircraft carrier, B-52 bombers, a Patriot missile interceptor battery and more naval firepower to the gulf region.

At last week’s meeting, Mr. Shanahan gave an overview of the Pentagon’s planning, then turned to General Dunford to detail various force options, officials said. The uppermost option called for deploying 120,000 troops, which would take weeks or months to complete.

Among those attending Thursday’s meeting were Mr. Shanahan; Mr. Bolton; General Dunford; Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director; and Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence.

“The president has been clear, the United States does not seek war with Iran, and he is open to talks with Iranian leadership,” Garrett Marquis, a National Security Council spokesman, said Monday in an email. “However, Iran’s default option for 40 years has been violence, and we are ready to defend U.S. personnel and interests in the region.”

The reduction of forces in the Middle East in recent years has been propelled by a new focus on China, Russia and a so-called Great Powers competition. The most recent National Defense Strategy — released before Mr. Bolton joined the Trump administration — concluded that while the Middle East remains important, and Iran is a threat to American allies, the United States must do more to ensure a rising China does not upend the world order.

As recently as late April, an American intelligence analysis indicated that Iran had no short-term desire to provoke a conflict. But new intelligence reports, including intercepts, imagery and other information, have since indicated that Iran was building up its proxy forces’ readiness to fight and was preparing them to attack American forces in the region.

The new intelligence reports surfaced on the afternoon of May 3, Mr. Shanahan told Congress last week. On May 5, Mr. Bolton announced the first of new deployments to the Persian Gulf, including bombers and an aircraft carrier.

Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which was designated a terrorist group by the Trump administration last month.Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which was designated a terrorist group by the Trump administration last month.Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
It is not clear to American intelligence officials what changed Iran’s posture. But intelligence and Defense Department officials said American sanctions have been working better than originally expected, proving far more crippling to the Iranian economy — especially after a clampdown on all oil exports that was announced last month.

Also in April, the State Department designated the Revolutionary Guards a foreign terrorist organization over objections from Pentagon and intelligence officials who feared reprisals from the Iranian military.

While much of the new intelligence appears to have focused on Iran readying its proxy forces, officials said they believed the most likely cause of a conflict will follow a provocative act, or outright attack, by the Revolutionary Guards’ navy. The Guards’ fleet of small boats has a history of approaching American Navy ships at high speed. Revolutionary Guards commanders have precarious control over their ill-disciplined naval forces.

Part of the updated planning appears to focus on what military action the United States might take if Iran resumes its nuclear fuel production, which has been frozen under the 2015 agreement. It would be difficult for the Trump administration to make a case that the United States was under imminent nuclear peril; Iran shipped 97 percent of its fuel out of the country in 2016, and currently does not have enough to make a bomb.

That could change if Iran resumes enriching uranium. But it would take a year or more to build up a significant quantity of material, and longer to fashion it into a weapon. That would allow, at least in theory, plenty of time for the United States to develop a response — like a further cutoff of oil revenues, covert action or military strikes.

The previous version of the Pentagon’s war plan included a classified subset code-named Nitro Zeus, a cyberoperation that called for unplugging Iran’s major cities, it power grid and its military.

The idea was to use cyberweapons to paralyze Iran in the opening hours of any conflict, in hopes that it would obviate the need to drop any bombs or conduct a traditional attack. That plan required extensive presence inside Iran’s networks — called “implants” or “beacons” — that would pave the way for injecting destabilizing malware into Iranian systems.

Two officials said those plans have been constantly updated in recent years.

But even a cyberattack, without dropping bombs, carries significant risk. Iran has built up a major corps of its own, one that successfully attacked financial markets in 2012, a casino in Las Vegas and a range of military targets. American intelligence officials told Congress in January that Iranian hackers are now considered sophisticated operators who are increasingly capable of striking United States targets.

Since Mr. Bolton became national security adviser in April 2018, he has intensified the Trump administration’s policy of isolating and pressuring Iran. The animus against Iran’s leaders dates back at least to his days as an official in the George W. Bush administration. Later, as a private citizen, Mr. Bolton called for military strikes on Iran, as well as regime change.

The newly updated plans were not the first time during the Trump administration that Mr. Bolton has sought military options to strike Iran.

This year, Defense Department and senior American officials said Mr. Bolton sought similar guidance from the Pentagon last year, after Iranian-backed militants fired three mortars or rockets into an empty lot on the grounds of the United States Embassy in Baghdad in September.

In response to Mr. Bolton’s request, which alarmed Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, the Pentagon offered some general options, including a cross-border airstrike on an Iranian military facility that would have been mostly symbolic.

But Mr. Mattis and other military leaders adamantly opposed retaliation for the Baghdad attack, successfully arguing that it was insignificant.

Edward Wong and David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington, and Steven Erlanger from Brussels.

@88m3 @ADevilYouKhow @wire28 @dtownreppin214
@DonKnock @dza @wire28 @BigMoneyGrip @Dameon Farrow @re'up @Blackfyre @Cali_livin @NY's #1 Draft Pick​

 

[Loose]

:ALERTRED:









@88m3 @ADevilYouKhow @wire28 @dtownreppin214
@DonKnock @dza @wire28 @BigMoneyGrip @Dameon Farrow @re'up @Blackfyre @Cali_livin @NY's #1 Draft Pick​

hope we send them and we lose

 

[Json]

A lot of people ain’t buying it but if Iran did it, it’s a signal of infiltration influence. Weird responses I’m seeing

What’s weird about it? If it was Iran, this is exactly what those with expertise said was their strengths. Only the stable genius was trying to provoke an oversized response and they gave a very measured but stern shot across the bow.