I normally have little or no time for Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson is just an upper class twit. But this morning Jeremy Corbyn has called for the British government to abstain from escalating tensions with Iran without “credible evidence” that Tehran was responsible for attacks on two oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. Interestingly, there hasn’t been as much as a grunt from Boris.

Grainy black & white footage
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/15/corbyn-no-credible-evidence-of-iran-role-in-tanker-attacks
from person or persons unknown in the States shows a boat pull up to what appears to be, (the side of), a ship and unidentifiable blobby persons on board the boat appear to touch at something on the side of the ship. That something, we are being told, was an unexploded mine and the personnel on the boat, we are being told, are either Iranians, friends/allies of Iran or just plain terrorists inspired by Iran.

To start with, the people on the boat could just as easily be American, Israeli, Saudis or British special forces because all four nationalities are aggressively seeking war with Iran but they need an excuse to convince their own electorate. In any crime situation, the first things looked at are motivation and evidence. If this few seconds of video is the only evidence they have then it would be thrown out of any court of law as laughable. So what of the motivation for these attacks? There is no doubt that the Iranians have said publicly that if they are blocked from exporting their oil through the Straits/Gulf Region, then nobody will be allowed export a drop of their own products either. Washington is now squeezing Iranian oil exports so right there, you could argue, is the perfect Iranian motivation.

However, while Iran is willing to fight if they have to, they certainly are not actively seeking war with America, (who in their right mind would?) Verbal sabre-rattling aside, it would make no sense for Tehran to provoke the White House. Contrast that with John Bolton & Mike Pompeo’s persistent threats against Iran. There can be no doubt that both of these war-mongers are pushing for conflict all over the Middle-East and Iran is seen as one of the last countries there to be dismantled and sent back to the stone age. Add to that America’s long and disgraceful history of false flag operations as the lying justification to make war against anyone they dislike.

The British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, described Corbyn’s comments as “pathetic and predictable”. The FCO had said: “No other state or non-state actor could plausibly have been responsible,” and pointed to a “recent precedent for attacks by Iran against oil tankers”. Those recent attacks they refer to amounted to unproven accusations which were uttered so often that they must now be accepted as facts by the voting public even without a shred of any credible evidence. This is precisely how false flag operations are run, (see “Gulf of Tonkin and the justification for the Vietnam War”). As to his observation that no other state or non-state actor could plausibly have been responsible, Israel would be the most obvious and capable culprit for just this sort of action. It would be hugely in Israel’s interests to see the Americans make war against Iran.

Jeremy Hunt further hit back at Corbyn over his comments, tweeting: “Pathetic and predictable. From Salisbury to the Middle East, why can he never bring himself to back British allies, British intelligence or British interests?” Hunt said Britain’s assessment “leads us to conclude that responsibility for the attacks almost certainly lies with Iran”. Might I suggest in response to Hunt that it could just be that Corbyn does not want the UK embroiled in yet another pointless war for the America’s sake. And on an aside, where is this so-called ‘assessment’ he refers to?

As a matter of interest, what is so pathetic and predictable about wanting peace? Does Hunt believe that it is the sole job of a foreign secretary to declare wars whenever possible. The modern day Western preoccupation with Iran began nearly seventy years ago when Mohammad Mosaddeq was democratically elected the 35th prime minister of Iran, holding office from 1951 until 1953. Mosaddeq looked at Iran’s assets and level of poverty and decided the western oil companies were ripping them off. So he nationalized the British ‘BP’. In response, London pleaded with Washington for help. The CIA were duly dispatched to overthrow Mosaddegh, which they quickly did and the “Shah of Iran” was imposed on the unruly Iranians. Decades of terror followed as the secret police of the Shah, (SAVAK) ran riot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK
The imprisonments, routine torture and executions continued until the Iranian people rose up and chased the Shah out of the country, replacing him with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
https://www.biography.com/political-figure/ayatollah-ruhollah-khomeini
The American Embassy in Tehran was occupied and ransacked and hostages were taken and held for some time. President Carter ordered a rescue effort which failed miserably as two of the rescue helicopters crashed into each other over Iran. The Yanks have never forgiven the Iranians for wanting to democratically run their own country – odd that, isn’t it?

Finally, whoever planted the explosives of those tankers, did so with a view to stop them dead in the water. Why then would they return in broad daylight, knowing they could easily be spotted? Even worse, why would they return to retrieve an unexploded mine? One presumes the mine was placed and perhaps remotely detonated. But it’s obvious that it failed to explode, which would make it unstable and dangerous to attempt retrieval. Of course, this presumes it was an actual mine and not a box of chocolates or something equally innocuous.

So if you have a vote in the forthcoming British election, which Jeremy would get your vote?