President Trump in an interview published Monday night characterized alleged attacks by Iran against two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman as “very minor” and suggested that the United States might not go to war to protect international oil supplies.
Trump’s assessment in Time magazine reflected a softer posture than that of senior administration officials at the Pentagon and the State Department, as well as some congressional Republicans, as tensions between the United States and Iran have flared recently.
In the interview, Trump said he would “certainly” go to war to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
“I would keep the other a question mark,” he said when asked whether he would take military action in response to attacks on oil tankers.
Last week, Trump administration officials blamed Iran for attacks against Norwegian and Japanese oil tankers.
“So far, it’s been very minor,” he told Time, referring to those and other recent attacks the United States has blamed on Iran.
[Iran threatens to surpass uranium limits as tensions with the U.S. continue to grow]
In its effort to convince other nations of Iran’s culpability, the Pentagon released several photographs Monday that it said showed Iran’s involvement in the tanker attacks more clearly than a grainy video released last week.
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan also announced Monday that he was sending about 1,000 additional troops to the Middle East “for defensive purposes to address air, naval, and ground-based threats.”
“The recent Iranian attacks validate the reliable, credible intelligence we have received on hostile behavior by Iranian forces and their proxy groups that threaten United States personnel and interests across the region,” he said in a statement.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that the Trump administration is considering a “full range of options” in response to the oil tanker attacks beyond the crippling sanctions it already has imposed, including on Iran’s oil exports.
“Of course, of course,” Pompeo told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday when asked if those options include military action.
Trump told Time that the Gulf of Oman is less strategically important for the United States than it used to be.
“Other places get such vast amounts of oil there,” he said. “We get very little. We have made tremendous progress in the last two and a half years in energy. . . . So we’re not in the position that we used to be in the Middle East where . . . some people would say we were there for the oil.”
Meanwhile, Iran said Monday that its stockpile of enriched uranium will surpass limits set by the 2015 international nuclear deal in 10 days unless European partners in the agreement do more to help it circumvent U.S. sanctions.
The announcement, made by the spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, was the first time Tehran explicitly said it was on track to violate the agreement. The increase in both quantity and quality of the enriched fuel could shorten the time, estimated at one year, that it would take to produce enough for a nuclear weapon.
Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-characterizes-alleged-attacks-by-iran-on-oil-tankers-as-very-minor/2019/06/18/4f2796f4-91c7-11e9-aadb-74e6b2b46f6a_story.html
2019-06-18 13:26:28Z
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