Again the US becomes the tool of forces poised to make money and foment sectarian strife. This time the Brits have been manipulated with the seizure of a UK-flagged tanker by the Iranians. It was perhaps retaliation for a prior incident near Gibraltar.
The window for a US-led bombing campaign in 2019 or 2020 remains open, depending on the domestic reelection needs of Individual-1, with or without a coalition of the willing.
With the seizure of a supertanker off Gibraltar, distracted UK government was set up by John Bolton as collateral damage
Bolton’s delighted reaction suggested the seizure was a surprise. But accumulating evidence suggests the opposite is true, and that Bolton’s national security team was directly involved in manufacturing the Gibraltar incident. The suspicion is that Conservative politicians, distracted by picking a new prime minister, jockeying for power, and preoccupied with Brexit, stumbled into an American trap.
In short, it seems, Britain was set up.
The consequences of the Gibraltar affair are only now becoming clear. The seizure of Grace I led directly to Friday’s capture by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards of a British tanker, the Stena Impero, in the Strait of Hormuz. Although it has not made an explicit link, Iran had previously vowed to retaliate for Britain’s Gibraltar “piracy”. Now it has its revenge.
As a result, Britain has been plunged into the middle of an international crisis it is ill-prepared to deal with. The timing could hardly be worse. An untested prime minister, presumably Boris Johnson, will enter Downing Street this week. Britain is on the brink of a disorderly exit from the EU, alienating its closest European partners. And its relationship with Trump’s America is uniquely strained.
[...]
The Bolton gambit succeeded. Despite its misgivings, Britain has been co-opted on to the front line of Washington’s confrontation with Iran. The process of polarisation, on both sides, is accelerating. The nuclear deal is closer to total collapse. And by threatening Iran with “serious consequences”, without knowing what that may entail, Britain blindly dances to the beat of Bolton’s war drums.
Trump may increasingly confront two choices: act military and risk a wider confrontation, or back down and lower declared aims. That’s a terrible spot for any president particularly when it results from a policy that Trump himself seems not to fully support or even understand.
fsi.stanford.edu/...
The planners in Tehran likely realize that an open engagement with the U.S. Navy would be suicide and casualties would be much higher than those of Operation Praying Mantis. Moreover, the development of precision ammunition over the last 10-20 years gives the Americans and their allies an even greater tactical advantage. No wonder that Iran now develops the instruments of irregular naval warfare. The hardware being introduced into service illustrates this asymmetric approach, especially for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) — while the navy of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRIN) remains mainly a blue-water fleet. Now possessing three Kilo-class submarines and several outdated surface vessels,37 Iran is currently developing mainly midget submarines,38 fast boats with unguided missiles, indigenously developed UAVs, a broad range of anti-ship missiles and mining capabilities.
It is highly likely that Iran would also use hit-and-run tactics in its naval operations. These would be based on deploying small, high-speed and hard-to-detect boats equipped with missiles, mines (mainly from civilian boats) and torpedoes; flying boats (like the missile-equipped Bavar-2); potentially, suicide boats (also civilian); anti-ship missiles (ship-based and from coastal batteries); and even oil spills against its enemy. It may not be ruled out that Iran would extensively use combat UAVs armed with either guided or unguided bombs, or anti-ship missiles (a wide range has been revealed, including the Karrar, Shahed-129, Fotros). Using UAVs, such as Raad or Hazem, in "kamikaze" tactics might also be considered. However, that action would be a last resort due to its impracticality. The basic means of engagement would probably be anti-ship missiles.
Iran's geography provides significant advantages in asymmetric operations. The size of the Persian Gulf (a mere 21 nautical miles wide at its narrowest) offers a small operational space that would cause problems for the U.S. Navy. Aircraft carriers would have to operate from the Gulf of Oman. More important, the northern parts of the Persian Gulf are strewn with small rock islands, impediments to large units, and also making it possible for small ones — including midget submarines — to hide. This would enable the Iranians to neutralize their technological weakness. Engaging small, fast units is difficult for large surface vessels like frigates and destroyers, which may be seriously damaged, as the USS Cole incident demonstrates.39
As a last resort, Iran could return to the tactics of the war against Iraq, when it tried to paralyze the movement of tankers in the Persian Gulf.40 Mine warfare and massive bombardment with anti-ship missiles, which Iran has been improving for years (mainly based on Chinese technology), would deal a great blow to freedom of movement near the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 40 percent of the world's seaborne oil exports pass.41 However, this would be a double-edged sword: the strait is the aorta through which the majority of Iran's goods and petroleum are exported.42 Ahmed S. Hashim is correct in saying that Iran "is unlikely to mine the Strait of Hormuz unless a conflict actually breaks out, as it depends on the Strait to export its own oil."43
mepc.org/...