Washington - President Donald Trump and Iranian leaders
traded accusations Friday over who was responsible for fiery
explosions that crippled two oil tankers off Iran's coast, but both
sides appeared cautious not to go beyond a war of words, at least for
now, to avoid a direct military confrontation.
After blaming Iran hours after what appeared to be coordinated
attacks on a Japanese and a Norwegian tanker on Thursday, the Trump
administration considered options Friday but showed no immediate sign
of responding.
Options include providing armed escorts to vessels navigating
vulnerable shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz, reflagging tankers
of friendly nations with the U.S. flag to entitle them to U.S. naval
protection, and adding more sanctions to what is already a long
blacklist.
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said the Pentagon was
making plans for possible military action in case of more attacks or
efforts to close the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic chokepoint
through which much of the world's oil passes.
"We obviously need to make contingency plans should the situation
deteriorate," Shanahan told reporters.
Iranian officials pointedly warned in April, after the Trump
administration tightened a ban on Iran's oil exports and worsened its
economic recession, that they might interrupt the flow of oil through
the narrow strait. The attacks, which caused no injuries, may have
been calculated to show that while Tehran could not withstand a
full-on U.S. military assault, it could still rattle the White House.
"Iran's real interest is to show it retains the ability to strike
back," said Jon Alterman, a former State Department official in the
George W. Bush administration now at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.
"The worst thing for Iran is to suffer the sanctions and be ignored."
U.S. officials said military action against Iran was not imminent.
U.S. intelligence agencies are seeking to bolster their initial
assessment that Iranian operatives had sabotaged the two tankers,
hoping to persuade U.S. allies to join the White House in publicly
condemning Tehran.
A defense official played down the likelihood that U.S. warships
would escort convoys of tankers in the Persian Gulf. The operation
would require allies to contribute warships, the official said, and
building that coalition might prove difficult for the White House.
Many leaders in Europe and Asia remain angry over Trump's decision to
withdraw last year from the Iran nuclear deal, signed in 2015 by the
Obama administration, Russia, China, France, Germany and Great
Britain. Under the agreement, Iran dismantled most of its nuclear
production infrastructure and admitted international inspectors.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was first to blame Iran for the tanker
explosions Thursday. On Friday, Trump echoed the charge in a TV
interview, saying a limpet mine attached to one of the ship's hulls
had "probably got essentially Iran written all over it," although
U.S. forces or allies did not recover the munition.
He instead pointed to a grainy video, taken from a U.S. surveillance
aircraft, that the Pentagon said shows a crew from an Iranian patrol
boat navigating to the stricken ship's bow and removing an unexploded
mine 10 hours after the initial explosion, then speeding off.
"So it was them that did it," Trump said on "Fox & Friends."
The tanker, the 558-foot Kokuka Courageous, reportedly was hit
midship with projectiles above the waterline after sunrise, but the
source wasn't clear.
"We received reports that something flew towards the ship," Yutaka
Katada, president of Kokaku Sangyo Co., which owns the ship, told a
news conference in Tokyo. "The place where the projectile landed was
significantly higher than the water level, so we are absolutely sure
that this wasn't a torpedo."
Crews abandoned the Kokura Courageous and the Norwegian-owned Front
Altair, which was attacked less than an hour later, with an Iranian
naval vessel helping rescue the crew on the 826-foot Front Altair.
Both ships were carrying fuel products to Asia and were sailing in
international waters.
The explosions occurred several hours before Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe met in Tehran with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei to try to ease tensions and create a U.S. communications
channel. Khamenei later said he had rejected Abe's overture, saying
"honest negotiations will not come from an individual such as Trump,"
according to Iranian state television.
Trump and Abe spoke by phone Friday, and the White House issued a
statement that said they discussed "the circumstances surrounding the
attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman," language considerably
less accusatory than Trump or Pompeo had used.
Iranian officials, who quickly denied any involvement in the
explosions Thursday, were careful Friday to blame Trump's aides and
allies - but not him, and suggested it might be the work of
unidentified actors seeking to create a crisis.
"That the US immediately jumped to make allegations against Iran- w/o
a shred of factual or circumstantial evidence - only makes
itabundantly clear that the #B _ Team is moving to a #PlanB: Sabotage
diplomacy," Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said on Twitter.
The "B-Team" is Zarif's derisive term for U.S. national security
adviser John Bolton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Zayed al Nahyan.
They represent governments determined to restrain Iran, isolate it
diplomatically and punish it economically for what they call its
"malign behavior," especially its support for militant groups in
Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
After four tankers were damaged by mines off the coast of the United
Arab Emirates a month ago, Bolton was adamant in warning that
additional violence would be met with sharp U.S. retaliation.
The administration subsequently sent the aircraft carrier Abraham
Lincoln and strategic bombers to the region, and an additional 1,500
U.S. troops to help bolster defenses for U.S. facilities and
personnel. But Trump pushed back against Pentagon requests for a more
robust escalation.
The U.S. case against Iran was not clear-cut on Friday. Some analysts
agreed with Iranian officials that Tehran had no incentive to attack
a Japanese tanker during Abe's highly-publicized visit.
"Put simply, it isn't in Iran's interest to escalate," Dina
Esfandiary, a fellow at the Century Foundation, a think tank in
Washington and New York, said in an interview Friday.
"Why would Iran want a war it is ill-equipped to fight?" he added.
"It would be isolated, would turn its new European friends against
it, and it would be fighting a militarily superior U.S."
Esfandiary said the attacks may have been a message from hard-line
elements in Iran's government that they could act against the
U.S.-led sanctions campaign and cripple global energy supplies.
But other analysts said Iran's goal was to create uncertainty and
sharply higher prices in oil markets that would encourage Japan and
other countries that rely on oil supplies from the Persian Gulf to
pressure the Trump administration to ease sanctions.
"They wanted to spook Abe," said Behnam Ben Taleblu, who specializes
in Iran at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a national
security think tank in Washington. "This is not the last iteration of
Iran escalating."