Iran views itself as the natural protector of the Persian Gulf and a greater U.S. or U.K. presence there could increase the chances for conflict, either by design or miscalculation.
President Donald Trump's decision to send additional U.S. military assets to the Persian Gulf region and the United Kingdom's proposal to form a coalition of European forces to patrol the Strait of Hormuz may only exacerbate the risk of confrontation with Iran.
With the prospect of dialogue impeded by difficult preconditions unlikely to be conceded by either side, experts have raised concern that a conflict could erupt either by design or miscalculation. Foreign policy analyst Shahed Ghoreishi, a graduate of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced and International Studies, toldthat"the Trump administration has pigeon-holed itself with increasingly audacious allies...
, but now finds himself on a potential warpath of his own. In spite of his anti-interventionist tendencies, the president has been goaded on by hawks such as national security adviser John Bolton, who has played a key role in pushing the U.S. toward war with Iraq, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The United Kingdom, like other parties to the 2015 nuclear deal known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action , continued to support it, but London has stepped up its own role in the Trump administration's self-styled"maximum pressure" campaign by seizing the Iranian supertankerearlier this month in Gibraltar, accusing it of attempting to violate EU sanctions by transporting oil to Syria. Nearly a week ago, Iran seized a U.K.
Even more recently, U.S. forces regularly patrolled the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, a conflict in which Washington and most other major global powers backed the latter. This period saw several bloody episodes between international forces, none more so thanafter reportedly mistaking it for an attacking F-14, an event that killed 290 civilians, in July 1989.
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