Showing that 74-year-old President Donald Trump’s Iran policy has teeth, the U.S. Navy interdicted an Iranian ship June 28 loaded with arms in the Persian Gulf on its way to Houthi rebels in Yemen. If there were any doubt about Iran sponsoring the proxy war in Yemen against Saudi Arabia, there’s no doubt now. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, 56, confirmed the interdiction, proving Iran continues its malign activities in the Persian Gulf. “The Security Counsel must extend the arms embargo on Iran to prevent further conflict in the region,” Pompeo told a State Department conference. When Trump cancelled 58-year-old former President Barak Obama’s July 15, 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] AKA “The Iranian Nuke Deal] May 8, 2018, the U.N. Security Council gasped. U.K., France, Germany, Russia and China were all signatories on the agreement.
Trump said when he cancelled the agreement May 8, 2018 that Iran funded a deadly proxy war against U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, not to mention threatening to annihilate Israel. Members of the EU and U.N. Security Council condemned Trump’s decision to back out the JCPOA, where Iran promised to halt its nuclear enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief, cash and the release of frozen Iranian assets. Once Obama handed Iran $1.7 billion in cold-hard-cash and another $150 billion in sanctions relief, Iran went on a rampage in the Middle East and North Africa. “No serious person can possibly believe Iran will use any weapon it receives for peaceful ends,” said Pompeo. Interdicting the arms ship shows that Iran is actively involved in supplying arms-and-cash to continue the Houthi’s proxy war against Saudi Arabia. Iran’s 60-year-old Foreign Minister Mohammad Javd Zarif worked feverishly to split the Security Council.
When Obama and 76-year-old former Secretary of State John Kerry (D-Mass.) bent over backwards to get the JCPOA, they thought Iran was feverishly in pursuit on a nuclear weapon. Getting Ayatollah Ali Khameinei to agree to suspend uranium enrichment seemed like a major coup. Yet the agreement never permitted U.N. weapons’ inspectors to go into Iran’s top secret military sites suspected of producing weapons grade uranium U-238. Despite all the suspicions, Iran always denied that it was building an A-bomb. Trump’s decision to cancel the JCPOA was a no-brainer based on Iran’s proxy war against Saudi Arabia and Israel. Pompeo faces an uphill battle in the U.N. Security Council getting Russia and China to continue Iran’s arms embargo. Pompeo admitted that the U.S. Navy and an unidentified partner interdicted Iran’s arms supply ship June 28 off the coast of Yemen.
When Saudi Arabia’s Abaiq-Khurais oil refinery was attacked with guided missiles Sept. 14, 2019, Iran denied any involvement, leaving it to Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Iran’s attack reduced the world’s flow of Persian Gulf oil by 25%, causing oil prices to spike in world markets. “Iran is not abiding by the U.N. arms embargo that is due to expire in four months now,” Pompeo said, appealing to Russia and China to back continuing the arms embargo. Sending 200 rocket-propelled grenades, more than 1,700 assault rifles, 21 surface-to-air and land attack missiles and several anti-tank missiles and other advanced weapons and missiles,” Pompeo made the strongest possible case to continue the arms embargo. Russia and China have a vested interest in challenging the U.S. for supremacy in international waters. Recent reports about China building a navy base in the Persian Gulf disturb Pompeo.
Supplying arms-and-cash to Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip, and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, Iran stirs the pot wherever it can in the Middle East and North Africa. As long a Ayatollah Ali Khameinei and his band of mullah’s run Iran, chaos reins in the Middle East. Like other totalitarian regimes, Iran has no free press, spewing unending propaganda blaming the U.S. and Israel for all of Iran’s economic failures. With the rial currency at the lowest exchange rate in history and with high unemployment, the Iranian economy is in free fall, collapsing under the weight of U.S. sanctions. Iran’s U.S.-educated Foreign Minister Zarif finds anyway he can to partner with Russian, China, North Korea and any other enemy to undermine U.S. foreign policy. Zarif now works with China to build a navy base in the Persian Gulf to neutralized U.S., influence.
Iran’s semiofficial IRNA news agency reported today that the U.S. did not interdict any Iranian ship in the Persian Gulf. Denying the incident allows Iran to save face at a time when they continue to take economic hits. It wasn’t that long ago when Iranian swift boats in the Persian Gulf captured a U.S. Navy patrol boat Jan. 12, 2016, holding 10 U.S. sailors hostage while they filmed fake confessions, watching sailors whimper and plead for their lives. When Trump issued his order April 22 for the U.S. navy to “destroy” any Iranian vessel threatening an U.S. ships, he served notice to the Ayatollah that he would not permit more humiliation to the U.S. navy. Pompeo wants the U.N. Security Council to continue the Iranian arms embargo, over objections from Russia and China. Trump shows that a get-tough policy with Iran bears fruit, forcing Iran to stop its malign a activities in Middle East and North Africa.
