Is War With Iran Imminent?

It is beginning to feel like a recurring nightmare.

You know it is not real. You know it will end badly. Yet you are unable to stop it.

The four "sabotaged" tankers in the Gulf of Oman were the beginning of a very familiar narrative.

The smoking gun appearing as a mushroom cloud.

In this iteration, Saudi Arabia recently claimed that four of its tankers (actually one belonging to a Norwegian company) were seriously damaged and implied that Iran was behind the attack.

Despite an initial lack of pictures or other evidence, it subsequently became clear that the damage in question consisted of small holes in the hulls and no explosions were reported.

By the way, this is still the only damage picture I could find, the Saudi tankers, initially photographed from a distance, seem to have vanished.

Still, both the Saudis and the UAE maintained that it was obviously Iran's work. And an American investigative team concurred after a very cursory examination, which lasted less than a day.

Then John Bolton and his moustache argued that the damage was "almost certainly" caused by Iranian mines. However, neither Bolton nor his moustache offered any proof or an explanation for the lack of accompanying explosions.

A few days later, UAE diplomats made a presentation to the UN Security Council and blamed "a state actor" for the incident.

But the whole thing looked, well, hokey.

No explosion, no sinking of ships, no wounded personnel and no real leakage (even though they tried to make it appear as one did).

So during that presentation, UAE, Norway and Saudi Arabia went technical and claimed that the damage was caused by "limpet mines."

That made the whole thing sound real and ominous. I could hear people saying OMG, limpet mines.

Remember Colin Powell's presentation on "high-grade (7075-T6)" aluminum tubes.

UAE and Saudi Arabia copied but sadly they could only do limpet mines.

Limpet Mines Are As Effective As Loose Lips in Sinking Ships

Do you know what limpet mines are?

They were introduced just before WWII and they are different from traditional mines in that they are attached to the hull of a ship with magnets.  Typically, they have timers to get them to explode at a specific time.

Here is the interesting part. Because their payload is small they are always placed below water level to ensure that the explosion opens up a hole in the hull to sink or seriously damage the ship.

In accordance with that common practice, Norway, UAE and Saudi Arabia claimed that limpet mines were placed by divers. Or frogmen as they were known when the limpet mines were in vogue.

Curiously, as you can see from the picture of Andrea Victory, these archaic mines were placed above the water line to make small holes that could be photographed and not below where they might sink them.

In any event, when it became clear that the world was not impressed with this alleged Iranian attack which callously aimed to open tiny holes in Saudi tankers, a new one was staged.

A few days ago, two tankers with "Japan related cargo" were attacked In the Strait of Hormuz.

The timing of Thursday’s attacks was especially sensitive because it came as the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, held talks with the Iranian leadership in Tehran in an effort to find a basis for discussions between the US and Iran.

Such an unlucky coincidence.

This time they went for a more spectacular explosion as you can see in this clip.

And this a screenshot.

You can see the difference from the earlier "attacks." 

Notice also the smoke coming from the stern from inside the tanker which couldn't be caused by limpet mines. And the flames emerging from below the water line which didn't jive with the rest of the reported incidents.

I was curious. So, I looked around a bit. The tanker in the clip is Front Altair owned by Frontline Ltd. This is what they said:

Frontline was able to deploy emergency responders in a timely manner, who extinguished fire on the vessel within hours of the incident and ensured no pollution resulted. Contrary to media reports, the vessel remains afloat and is being attended to by a salvage vessel. 

It is clear that the picture was worse than what the damage was.

More importantly,

No close-up images of the damage to the vessel's hull have been released, but the crew of a tug that helped put out the fire was heard saying on the radio that there was a large hole just above the waterline. 

Above the waterline.

As breathless speculations ensued about the terrorist regime in Tehran, the US Navy released a footage that showed some folks on a boat removing limpet mines from one of the tankers. They claimed that these were members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

That is the video.

Now look at the still from the video. This is the "Japan related cargo" ship, named Kokuka Courageous.

It is annotated by the US Navy.

You have to grant me that this is a curious image.

The hole on the side of the tanker is relatively tiny compared to the flames in the picture and clip I posted above. It barely looks bigger than the unexploded "limpet mine" shown to the right.

Moreover, both mines are way above the water line and the one that exploded seems to have caused very little damage.

There is a clear cognitive dissonance between this picture and the tanker in flames.

My guess is that Iran realized that they were being set up, sent out patrol boats to see if there were more limpet mines. Their job was easy as none of them seemed to have been placed below water line.

The divers who placed the limpet mines were in fact climbers.

Today we were shown a new image from Kokuka Courageous.

The limpet mine damage is unbelievable.

Literally.

What About A War With Iran?

Remember my earlier concern about the three amigos trying to ignite the region to save their own skins?

Well, there are more signs.

To begin with, Israeli media claimed that the intelligence about Iran's involvement came from Mossad.

Then I found out that,

the National Security Advisors of Russia, the US, and Israel, Nikolay Patrushev, John Bolton and Meir Ben-Shabbat, respectively, are expected to meet in Jerusalem to talk about Iran and Syria and what Israel considers the “threat to its security” in the Levant.

You have to admit that this is strange.

Why would Russia, ostensibly an Iranian ally, would meet with John Bolton and his moustache and of all places in Jerusalem to discuss Iran.

Then, yesterday, Iran announced that it will breach the enriched uranium limit set by the 2015 agreement on 27 June, just nine day from now.

The following day we had this:

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said his country did not seek to wage war with any nation and had remained "loyal" to its international obligations.

Which tells me that the hardliners were egging on the Orange Man.

Who responded by sending an additional 1,000 troops to the region. They will join the 1,500 sent last month.

Can you see the trend?

Color me concerned.

Very concerned.

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UPDATE

I stand corrected. There were pictures of the other three tankers involved in the original incident. They were released by the UAE.

The damage was so extensive (!) that they did not need to evacuate the crew.

There were other pictures provided by the UAE. But I will not bore you with them as they were close ups of nondescript hull damages.

Any serious damage that does not require the evacuation of the crew cannot be serious by definition.