US Stoking Tension in Persian Gulf as Its 'Losing Control,' Needs 'More Wars'

The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, which plays a crucial role for global trade, have yet again found themselves in the focus of the US military, as Washington has accused Iran of "seizing and harassing" civilian vessels – a practice that the Islamic Republic has resolutely denied employing.

The United States realizes that it is losing control, and cannot maintain it without creating more wars, which explains why it is stoking tension in the Persian Gulf, Laith Marouf, a broadcaster and journalist based in Beirut, Lebanon, told Sputnik.

With increasingly more countries rejecting the US-driven so-called "rules-based order," and America feeling that its coveted superior role of “being the world policeman that the laws don't apply to” slipping from its grasp, Washington is desperate to fan hostilities in the region, Marouf underscored.

According to the US press, thousands of US Marines and sailors have been brought to the Persian Gulf by the USS Bataan and the USS Carter Hall, as part of a buildup ongoing for months. On August 4, unnamed US officials told the press that the Pentagon was considering putting armed personnel on commercial ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, as a part of an intensified response from Washington to the allegedly destabilizing activity caused by Iran's “harassment and seizure of merchant vessels.” The Iranian Foreign Ministry dismissed the US' claims as untrue.

“In the last two years, we saw multiple ships confiscated by the United States - some in international waters - that belong to Iran," Laith Marouf pointed out, adding:

"It seems like the United States wants to police the world, and in this situation, they want to become a valet service for these international shipping companies that are looting oil from the Gulf... The more the United States acts in such pirate ways, the more we will lose control of the situation."

Dangerous Escalation

Reports of more than 3,000 US military personnel having arrived in the Red Sea on board two warships following Washington’s allegations of Iran "seizing" several civilian ships in the waterways is a dangerous escalation, Mazda Majidi, long-time antiwar and social justice activist from Iran, told Sputnik.

“It's really an escalation that's not really called for by actual developments on the ground,” the activist said, underscoring that it was pretty much a “war footing.”

Washington accuses Iran’s Navy of no less than 20 such incidents involving commercial vessels over the past two years.

“The average, accordingly, is less than one a month,” underscored Mazda Majidi, who has written extensively on the nuclear deal and other issues pertaining to Iran and the Middle East. He added that, like the Iranian Navy has said, some of the instances were a reaction to a distress signal, when they went in to see if they could help.

“But in the bigger picture, the ongoing problem is the continual US seizure of Iranian oil tankers around the globe. And while the US claims that these are based on the sanctions on Iran, that sanctions that the US has placed on Iran. Those sanctions do not apply to international waters. In other words, the US Navy has no legal right to seize Iranian oil tankers anywhere it sees fit. So in that sense, the Iranian reaction is related to what the US has been doing to tankers carrying Iranian oil,” Mazda Majidi said.

The activist further emphasized that with the US Navy displaying constant activity with its warships in the very narrow waterway of the Strait of Hormuz, and with the maneuvers happening off Bahrain, with its major US naval base, there is a reason that Iran feels “threatened by the constant US presence.”

“And it's not paranoia, it's it's real concern when you have a military force as powerful as the US right off your coast,” Mazda Majidi said.

Bearing in mind that approximately 20 percent of the world's oil goes through the Persian Gulf, and specifically the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranian government has been warning for years that the US presence in the Red Sea is fraught with potential consequences for the crude trade, if nothing else. But there is also a much greater danger.

“One of the things that Iran has said for years, given that they're going up against a naval presence that is several times the strength of its own… is that … if you start bombing us, if you invade us, if you attack us, we're going to block the Strait of Hormuz. And given how narrow the strait is and the fact that it's right on Iran's shores, that's a real possibility… And if that happens, it will cause that serious disruption and particularly to the transport of oil,” the antiwar and social justice activist emphasized.

Iran's naval presence in the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, and the Arabian Sea in the region is related to its own security, he added, while giving credit to the possibility that the US, with its current moves, is trying to tell Tehran that if it fails to enter agreements with Washington, “they can always escalate.”

“The problem is, these types of escalations sometimes can have unintended consequences. It may be that both sides have no intention of starting an all-out war, but an incident here, an accident there, could cause unforeseen consequences which may be outside the control of both parties.”

As for reports of US putting armed personnel on commercial ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, this could be “posturing,” Mazda Majidi accentuated. "First of all, the ships, from whatever countries... transporting goods… have to agree to this, protection… And then there are insurance issues. So it's this is not as easy as it sounds," he conceded, but if it does happen, “it's very much a wartime kind of action.”