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Comment by lordnacho | Hacker News Reader

I can't help but be sceptical about the suggestion that Iran attacked the oil tanker.

They're trying to be friends with Japan, but they attack a Japanese vessel while the PM of Japan is actually visiting? Really?

They aren't a superpower, and the US has bases all the way around Iran. Maybe I'm a strategic simpleton whose entire diplomatic experience is playing Civ, but it just doesn't seem smart.

Plus you have to wonder about the evidence for the Iraq war. That seemed pretty flimsy too. And it involved some of the same senior staff.

If international diplomacy were a reality TV show, it would make sense though.

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The phrasing of your first paragraph confuses me. “I can’t help but...” as if this sentiment were hard to justify. The US government is notorious for lying its way into wars, and the current administration is full of psychopaths who would love a justification to invade Iran.

It’s like finding a notorious serial killer standing over a body holding a knife who says, “a ghost did it.” “I can’t help but be skeptical about the ghost....”

It was painfully obvious bullshit in 2003 and we must not fall for it again. If we do, it’ll make the disaster of Iraq look like a fun little game.

I guess it's a nuance of what that phrase means. It seems to me there are many reasons to disbelieve that the Iranians would do this. Reasons that can't be ignored no matter what logical contortions I were to make.

What reasons?

It sounds like the phrase did confuse you.

"I can't help but be sceptical..." simply means "I am skeptical..."

Try that substitution in your example and it should be more clear:

> It’s like finding a notorious serial killer standing over a body holding a knife who says, “a ghost did it.” “I am skeptical about the ghost....”

The reason it doesn't make any sense is that its all a bunch of lies and excuses to start a war, its not like the US hasn't been barking up this tree for quite a while now.

And there were no weapons of mass destruction, all lies. It's public information but you'll have to search for it yourself because it will never be reported in the mainstream media, people might start asking the wrong questions.

The US going to war with Iran is John Bolton's wet dream.

Japanese Tanker Owner Denies Ship Hit By Mine, Says Crew Saw "Flying Objects" Before Attack https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-14/japanese-tanker-ow...

I think this means that someone else tries to ignite a war. Could be similar to the USS Liberty incident, but it all needs an investigation by neutral parties. Does the US needs all that oil?

> Does the US needs all that oil?

The USA doesn't need to use the oil for the USA to claim there is either a "national security" or world geopolitical rationale for going to war to "protect" it.

Petrodollar Warfare[1] is a theory that the US can and does attack (or otherwise undermine) any oil producing country that tries to transact its oil in any currency (or commodity) other than USD.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar_warfare

We do have video of what appears to be Iranians removing an undetonated mine from one of the ships. It is entirely possible, and it is known, that the Iranian military isn't exactly cohesive like other countries. There are fractures and some rogue elements. It's entirely possible a rogue element did this, or it's possible it came from the top down.

Iran knows that the US public doesn't believe its own US intelligence after Iraq, so it could easily be behind the attacks knowing that the US is on a leash of public opinion to do anything about it.

Even taken at face value, removing something in full view of US Navy (present at the scene for 4 hours) is not the same thing as "attaching" mines. It may well be that they were collecting evidence, on the record helpfully provided by US.

It is also interesting that a 3rd world country's navy has better camera equipment than the premiere power.

> It is also interesting that a 3rd world country's navy has better camera equipment than the premiere power.

Defense acquisitions at it's finest. Various bits of that camera have been certifiably touched by workers in all 50 states, and it took 10 years just to work out the contract details. That thing is bomb-proof but will fail catastrophically when exposed to a firm sneeze, and the CMOS sensor was "commercial off the shelf" tech from the lunar landing era.

Then what do you make of Iran showing up afterwards and forcing a ship that actually saved some sailors to hand over said sailors at gun point before the US could get there, therein making it seem like Iran rescued the sailors?

Or the photo of what looks like a mine, and the Iranian boat being in the exact same place...then that item just disappearing? Seems like a lot of coincidences.

That's even excluding a huge surge in activity of the Houthis, which are Iranian funded.

"It is also interesting that a 3rd world country's navy has better camera equipment than the premiere power."

I also don't know where you're getting this, the video the US Navy has is clearly taken from a drone miles and miles away from the ship, completely out of view of anyone.

I recommend Dan Carlin's episode on Japan in the '20s and '30s.

We have video of some people doing something next to a big ship. Any interpretation beyond that from the US government can’t be trusted. Remember the photos of Iraqi WMD?

You’re right, Iran might have really done this. It’s also highly, highly likely that this is a big steaming pile of bullshit from the US.

What to do? Well, the consequences of acting on a US lie would be catastrophic. The consequences of failing to act on a real act by Iran would be negligible. The choice is clear. I pray we choose wisely, for once.

Iran knows that the US public doesn't believe its own US intelligence after Iraq, so it could easily be behind the attacks knowing that the US is on a leash of public opinion to do anything about it.

That's a very optimistic take on U.S. public opinion. I think this is going to be a lot easier than you assume. If you start with Trump's approval rating, which is somewhere in the low forties, you just need another ten percent of the country to find it unbelievable that somebody would fake a casus belli against Iran and U.S. intelligence would go along with it. Once the mobilization is in swing, there will be an additional cushion of people who don't think the government should be second-guessed during a war, or who shrug their shoulders because they think Iran has it coming anyway. The media can't help cooperating; their editorial content might be against the war, but war coverage is inherently exciting and will stoke people's appetite.

If Trump does this -- and I think he regards it as his best shot at re-election -- I wouldn't be surprised if his approval rating goes to over 60% in the first week of the conflict.

We had satellite images of wmds, we had videos of iraquis smashing babys in hospitals + witnesses - we had it up to here with faked evidence and lies.

Here's the video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5rZeMqvZ9g

Iran also has a complicated internal power structure the players in which are not necessarily always in agreement or in full knowledge of each others' actions. It makes it a trickier state to deal with compared to your run-of-the mill unitary dictatorship.

This is a (correct) view that is frustratingly underreported.

Ironically this was very true in imperial Japan. I recently listened to Craig Nelson's "Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness" and this was stressed repeatedly.

The factionalism, not just between the civilian government and the military, but between the Navy and the Army was vast. There was no unitary government, in any sense. Their Navy never thought they could defeat the United States over a protracted war, but the internal factionalism forced their hand.

It ought to make it easier to divide them in war, and come to a swifter resolution in conflict.

Militarily defeating the Iranian government would be easy no matter what. The hard part is winning the peace. And by “hard” I mean “essentially impossible, and trying to do so will wreck us.”

This is what the assholes who want a war with Iran either fail or refuse to understand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War

IRI's political dynamics is no way informs its ideological military arm: http://iranprimer.usip.org/resource/revolutionary-guards

Reminds me of when the freshly minted new strong men of china visited india, only to be greeted with " you know your army just marched over some parts of the border?"

Honestly I can't get past the idea that somehow an image of Iranians removing a mine from an oil tanker is somehow a smoking gun proving that they put it on ... It all screams fake news, information warfare, to me.

As far as who would like the US to go to war with Iran (apart from Bolton) Saudi Arabia and Israel spring to mind ...

Remember how we were railroaded into war with Iraq using fake news about weapons of mass destruction (from the Whitehouse that time), fool us once shame on you fool us a second time shame on us.

I found this argument on why Iran would attack, in r/geopolitics to be plausible. https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/c0gi8b/why_ira...

I think this a perceptions issue. IRGC done VERY well recently, successes in Syria, Houthis, Iraq, much closer ties and success in Gaza/Hamas. They feel good about themselves and view US as impotent(as in Syria). It could be a threat and demonstration of what they can do.

These are hard experienced and utterly committed men. They do not feel weak at all. Trump is a bit of a joke to them as Obama was before.

If Iran didn't attack the ships who did? It would be impossible for the US Govt to orchestrate this and keep it secret. Enough people inside government would be horrified that it would 100% leak immediately if not beforehand.

If not Iran, why is there video of an Iranian navy vessel pulled up alongside the attacked tanker?

> If Iran didn't attack the ships who did?

Iran's regional rivals, Saudi Arabia and UAE have been staunch proponents of a US attack on Iran and they stand to gain enormously if such an attack happens: a major oil supplier gets removed, increasing demand for their oil; the war increases the price of oil; their only serious rival in the region gets destroyed; and to top it all, it will be at no cost to them—US will pay for the war with money, lives, and reputation and they stand to gain all the benefits.

It would be very convenient if Iran does something to legitimize, even force US to destroy the country to rubble, wouldn't it?

> Enough people inside government would be horrified that it would 100% leak immediately if not beforehand.

Saudi Arabia does not have the same limitation. If they could orchestrate and get away with Khashoggi murder in another country, a tanker attack in their backyard is a piece of cake for them.

if they could orchestrate and get away with Khashoggi murder in another country

They totally didn't get away with it though. They were incompetent, bungled it and totally got caught. Faking an Iranian mine attack, including getting an Iranian navy vehicle filmed at the scene is orders of magnitude more complex and difficult. No way a gulf state could do it. US could do it, but couldn't keep the secret.

Thing is that SA is incompetent. Really incompetent.

You can say many things about IRGC but they are not incompetent.

The only possible actors are..(without taking video into account). Iran, Israel(incredibly unlikely but they could do it and keep it secret for a while), Houthis(same thing as Iran really).

US is just incapable of an operation like this and keeping it secret.

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