On Monday, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE acknowledged 'sabotage attacks' on maritime vessels in the Gulf. This comes after a week of intensifying rhetoric between the U.S. and Iran and just as an Iranian official described U.S. Navy vessels in the region as an opportunity, not a threat.
"We’ll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it will be a very bad mistake,” U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday. “If they do anything they will suffer greatly.”U.K. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt echoed the mood in Brussels on Monday, where he was attending an EU foreign ministers' meeting."
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Brussels en route to Russia to"share intelligence" with allies on the"escalating" threat from Iran.U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook told reporters. " Over the weekend,"false reports" claimed there had been explosions at a UAE port. This has since been clarified by the UAE, which acknowledged through a Foreign Ministry statement that"four commercial, civilian trading vessels of various nationalities suffered acts of sabotage." No further detail has yet emerged.
There is no solid information yet as to the group or groups responsible for the sabotage attacks, but all eyes will be on Iran's regional proxies. The attacks came within hours of various threats from Iranian military officials as to the country's ability to hit out at the U.S. presence in the region if provoked. There has been an undercurrent to the rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran as to ongoing maritime security in the region, and this is a powerful reinforcing message.
This followed taunts on Friday from Ayatollah Yousef Tabatabai Nejad that the"billion-dollar [U.S.] fleet can be destroyed with one missile. Last week the rhetoric between the U.S. and Iran intensified, as the U.S. announced the dispatch to the region of a carrier group, a bomber task force including B-52s and a Patriot missile defense system.
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