On Thursday evening, social media posts claimed the UK flagged and Japanese owned crude oil tanker Atlantic Pioneer had crossed over into Iranian territorial waters. According to the Marine Traffic website, on Friday morning the tanker was in the Gulf of Oman.
I don’t know if these social media reports are accurate, but considering the recent behavior of the US and Britain, I cannot discount it. The US, with the help of the UK, is attempting to goad the Iranians into taking action and thus providing a pretext to get the next neocon war going.
Around the same time reports about the Atlantic Pioneer appeared on Twitter, Trump’s secretary of state posted the following about an earlier incident which was not independently verified and therefore in doubt. The US and UK governments—both with considerable track records for pathological lying—are the only sources for this supposed violation of (economic warfare) sanctions.
The U.S. condemns the IRGC-Navy’s attempt to harass the UK vessel near the Strait of Hormuz. We commend the Royal Navy in ensuring freedom of navigation and will continue to work with our allies to ensure the Iranian regime does not disrupt maritime security and global commerce.
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) July 12, 2019
Iran has denied the incident.
The corporate propaganda media dutifully regurgitated what the British defense media said about the alleged incident.
The neocon-infested Trump administration will ultimately have its war against Iran and the consequences will be catastrophic. The US and UK have increased their “military presence” in the Persian Gulf ahead of the inevitable.
The UK is to increase its military presence in the Gulf by sending a second warship to the region. The warship's deployment has been brought forward as a result of the deepening crisis with Iran.
Read more on this story here: https://t.co/t1vm6zgRq4 pic.twitter.com/XH4mZDyJHv
— Sky News (@SkyNews) July 12, 2019
Meanwhile, on Trump’s favorite neocon war propaganda network, Sean Hannity and the detestable Rudy Giuliani—his pockets bulging with terrorist MEK cash—continue to distract from core issues with lies (“cash on the tarmac”) and the never-ending and completely irrelevant dickering between the two sides of the one-sided corporate state political party.