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A little over 12 hours after the announcement of the new crisis in Washington slumber, Pompeo appeared in the State Department's briefing room to dramatically increase stakes.
"According to the US government, the Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for the attacks that occurred in the Gulf of Oman today," said Pompeo.
He cited the intelligence, the weapons used, the expertise required and the sophistication of the badault and previous attacks to conclude that it was the last badault on Iran against "freedom-loving nations".
Pompeo did not provide any evidence for his charges. He did not allow questions so that journalists could challenge his badertions. And his decision not to take a few days to conduct a full investigation left no doubt about the intentions of the United States.
He left the room after warning that "the United States will defend its strengths and interests and stand by its partners and allies to preserve world trade and regional stability".
Later Thursday night, the US Central Command released a video that, according to his information, shows a smaller Iranian ship sailing alongside the tanker to remove an unexploded mine. An individual stands on the bow of the boat and can be seen removing an object from the hull of the tanker. The United States says that this object is probably an unexploded mine.
Pompeo's approach will do nothing to quell the anxiety that the United States and Iran are locked in an inexorable cycle of escalation likely to unleash a disastrous war.
And after putting the prestige of the Trump administration in the crosshairs, he left open the question of Washington's next steps in dealing with a crisis that has caused soaring oil prices and has few obvious outflows .
US presses on Iran
Washington insists that its new strategy of economic and political pressure on Iran aims to bring the Islamic Republic back to the negotiating table. But many US allies fear that this will lead more to a military confrontation.
Aside from Pompeo's quick warning to Iran about the attacks and the video of CENTCOM, no independent international badessment has again blamed Iran or its agents for Be responsible for these attacks – although suspicions weigh heavily on the Islamic Republic.
Until now, nothing indicates that Washington is preparing a military response to tanker attacks. He is more likely to use them to reinforce his arguments for Iranian malfeasance.
The United States also convened a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on oil tanker strikes Thursday, but did not provide any evidence to support Pompeo's remarks.
The uncertainty over the aftermath of things is also fueled by indications that Trump is not on the same wavelength as key members of his national security team on Iran. .
The president, reluctant to be dragged into alien mishaps, is considered much less hawkish about the issue than Pompeo and national security advisor John Bolton.
Shortly after Pompeo made his severe warning, which Trump had tweeted, the president was still hoping for possible talks with Iran.
Iran will never be ready, if the remarks made Thursday by the Twitter thread of the Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei are the proof.
"I do not consider Trump as a person deserving to exchange messages with, I have no answer for him and I will not answer him," wrote Khamenei.
Fog of war weighs on tanker attacks
The question of who is behind Thursday 's bombings may not be as clear elsewhere than it is in Washington.
The fog of war in the region, with its bitter rivalries, opaque motivations and bubbling tensions, gives several possible explanations for the strike.
If Iran were involved, it might have sent a clear message to the United States, telling them it had the ability to hold the world economy to ransom by attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
One way to consider the targeting of a Japanese tanker would be to conclude that someone wants to send Trump a message that his wishes to protect US allies are empty.
But if Iran hoped to use Abe's visit to convince Japan to resume buying oil despite US pressure, it would not make much sense for the government to order an attack on a Japanese-owned vessel. .
But decision-making in Iran is not monolithic. Even if the Iranian forces or proxies were to blame, the action might not have been ordered by the political leaders in Tehran, who are struggling with a constant power struggle with the ruling clerics.
And the body of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards sometimes has the autonomy to act outside the auspices of the country's religious or political authorities.
The thriving industry of conspiracy theory in the Middle East also means that there are other justifications for attacks. An Iranian enemy like Saudi Arabia, eager for a US-Iranian confrontation, does not it have interest to organize such an attack to give a bad image of Tehran?
"Attacks reported against oil tankers related to Japan took place while PM @AbeShinzo met with the ayatollah @ khamenei-ir for in-depth and friendly talks," Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Thursday.
"Suspicious does not begin to describe what probably happened this morning."
The fact that this attack was more sophisticated and extended than the previous one is sobering. And will fuel concerns that the United States and Iran are on track to recreate the proxy war in the Gulf of the 1980s, which has been repeatedly out of control.
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