ANALYSIS - Shipping Incidents Off Iran Play Into US Strategy Of Piling Pressure On Tehran

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 20th July, 2019) Any new attack on foreign commercial ships in the Persian Gulf will feed in Washington's anti-Iranian narrative as it builds a coalition against Tehran, experts told Sputnik.

Washington said on July 9 it wanted to form a coalition of allies to safeguard key waterways in the middle East after a series of attacks on foreign tankers that it blamed on Iran. Calls are likely to be renewed after Iran seized a UK-flagged ship in the Strait of Hormuz allegedly for flouting maritime rules.

"A further escalation will help the US to build a stronger coalition of countries against Iran. Every shipping incident also directly feeds into the US' strategy to put more pressure on Iran," Hooshang Amirahmadi, the head of the American Iranian Council, said.

Raymond Baker, who sits on the board of directors at the International Council for Middle East Studies, told Sputnik that the United States had been struggling to win its allies over for the project of countering Iran because of President Donald Trump's US-centrist policy.

"The 'America First' orientation of the Trump administration makes coalition building on any issue extremely difficult," he said.

He warned however that Washington's "reckless" policy on Iran "is becoming more dangerous by the day" after the United States said on Thursday it had downed an Iranian drone for flying close to a US warship in the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran denied this.

This was the second time the United States and Iran appeared to head toward a military clash after Iran downed a US spy drone in the Strait last month.

President Trump said he had weighed retaliatory airstrikes on Iranian military targets.

The latest drone shooting is unlikely to lead to a direct confrontation, Baker argued, but it fits into a pattern of rising US-Iranian tensions in the area.

"The Trump foreign policy makes rational evaluation of prospects difficult ... American power is now wielded by an inexperienced and volatile president who makes major decisions by his 'gut' reactions. We are facing a nightmare scenario," he predicted.

Amirahmadi said the importance of the Middle Eastern shipping lanes for global oil trade could never be overstated. The US Energy Information Agency has called the Strait of Hormuz the world's most important transit chokepoint, with an estimated third of all seaborne oil passing through it in 2018.

"Shipping incidents are very dangerous in the Persian Gulf. Iran began to disrupt shipping by targeting some tankers but it has significantly reduced such attacks fearing that they will eventually lead to an uncontrollable war. Yes, incidents of the sort can lead to war," Hooshang Amirahmadi said.

Baker warned that hawks in the Trump administration, such as National Security Adviser John Bolton, had little interest in averting a war with Iran, seeing it as a "leftover business" from the assault on Iraq, but said the Islamic Republic was eager to downplay any US provocations to avoid a military clash.