Has
a war between the United States and Iran become inevitable? That is what
some in the mainstream media seem to be claiming, but let us hope that is not
true, because such a war would mean immense death and destruction. If the
Iranian regime felt that their survival was at stake, they would throw everything in their entire arsenal at the United
States and Israel, and they would unleash Hezbollah to commit horrific acts of
terror all over the globe. That would include acts of terror inside the
United States, and most Americans have absolutely no idea how nightmarish it
would be to have Hezbollah terrorists striking soft targets all across the
country. And in order to quickly win a war against Iran, the
U.S. would probably have to use nuclear weapons, and that is a line that we do
not want to cross. This wouldn’t be anything like our wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq, but very few people seem to understand this.
And within the last 48 hours, such a conflict has
gotten much, much closer. Here are 5 of the most important developments…
#1 According to President Trump,
the U.S. Navy shot down an Iranian drone over the Strait of Hormuz. The
following comes from NBC News…
President
Donald Trump on Thursday said that a U.S. Navy ship “destroyed” an Iranian
drone over the Strait of Hormuz — the latest in a series of tense incidents
between Washington and Tehran.
Trump told
reporters at the White House on Thursday that the USS Boxer — a U.S. Navy
amphibious assault ship — “took defensive action” against the Iranian drone that
had “closed into a very, very near distance, approximately 1,000 yards.”
The drone was “threatening safety
of the ship and the ship’s crew” and “was immediately destroyed,” he said.
#2 The Iranians denied that it was
their drone. So either the Iranians are lying (which is a very real
possibility), or someone else may be trying to start a war between our two
nations. When asked about the drone, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad
Javad Zarif seemed to indicate that the drone which was shot down did
not belong to them…
“We have no information about
losing a drone today,” Zarif told reporters at the United Nations before a
meeting with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
#3 But the Iranians have admitted
that they have seized a Panamanian-flagged, UAE-based oil tanker.
According to Iran, the tanker was seized because it was illegally smuggling
Iranian oil “to
foreign customers”…
The tanker was seized by Revolutionary Guard forces
on July 14 after getting intercepted south of Iran’s Larak Island in the
strategic Strait of Hormuz amid allegations that the tanker was smuggling fuel
from Iranian smugglers to foreign customers.
It remains unclear to which
country or company the tanker belongs but a tanker based in the United Arab
Emirates disappeared earlier this week.
#4 The U.S. State Department has
condemned Iran for seizing the tanker, and U.S. officials are demanding that they immediately release it…
In a
statement, a State Department spokesperson said the U.S. “strongly condemns the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy’s continued harassment of vessels and
interference with safe passage in and around the Strait of Hormuz.”
“Iran must cease this illicit
activity and release the reportedly seized crew and vessel immediately. We will
continue to work closely with our allies and partners to ensure the Iranian
regime’s extortion tactics and malign activities do not further disrupt
maritime security and global commerce,” the spokesperson said.
#5 It has been announced that the
U.S. is deploying 500 troops to Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
As tensions with Iran continue to rise, the number of troops being staged at
this base is likely to increase dramatically. The following comes
from CNN…
Five-hundred
troops are expected to go to the Prince Sultan Air Base, located in a desert
area east of the Saudi capital of Riyadh, according to US two defense
officials. A small number of troops and support personnel are already on site
with initial preparations being made for a Patriot missile defense battery as
well as runway and airfield improvements, the officials said.
The US has wanted to base troops
there for some time because security assessments have shown Iranian missiles
would have a difficult time targeting the remote area.
I don’t
know who is doing those “security assessments”, because the truth is that
Iranian missiles can easily reach that base.
For a
while there it seemed like things had cooled off a bit in the Middle East, and
many were hoping that the threat of an imminent conflict had been averted.
Unfortunately,
things are now more tense than ever, and a single mistake could set off a chain
of events that nobody is going to be able to stop.
On Thursday, Iran’s foreign
minister made the following very ominous statement…
“We live in a very dangerous environment,”
the Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, said Thursday at the United Nations
before news of the drone was made public. “The United States has pushed itself
and the rest of the world into probably the brink of an abyss.”
And once
we plunge into that abyss, there is no turning back.
Of course
most ordinary Americans aren’t really thinking about Iran at all. They
are just busy working hard, raising their kids and trying to build their
lives. Perhaps they have heard a little bit about tensions with Iran on
the news, but most of them have absolutely no idea that we could literally be
on the verge of an apocalyptic war in the Middle East.
If a full-blow war with Iran
erupts, events are going to start escalating very rapidly and it will set the
stage for many of the nightmare scenarios that I have been relentlessly warning about.
A lot of
the talking heads on television seem to think that “the worst case scenario”
would be having the U.S. dragged into another endless “quagmire” like we
witnessed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
No, that
is definitely not the worst case scenario.
The Iranians have been preparing for this conflict
for decades, and they would hit us with everything that they have got.
In order to defeat them quickly, we would have to
go beyond just using conventional weapons, and that is somewhere that we do not
want to go.
About the
author: Michael Snyder is
a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is
the author of four books including Get
Prepared Now, The Beginning Of
The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His
articles are originally published on The Economic
Collapse Blog, End
Of The American Dreamand The Most Important
News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other
prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel
free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we
need to wake more people up while there is still time.