Attention to the Unseen

The Associated Press reports: Iran and Britain appeared to signal Saturday that they are not seeking confrontation, a day after Iran seized a British-flagged tanker in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a flashpoint in rising tensions between Tehran and the West. Iran’s state news agency said it had seized the Stena Impero for an investigation after it had collided with an Iranian fishing boat — an explanation that avoided portraying the incident as a tit-for-tat move in the current tense…

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  Alex Billington: “Wow wow wow. How much of a difference there is when a woman makes a war documentary. The story of a young mother in Syria, made as a film for her daughter to watch one day. It’s remarkable. Truly horrifying & astoundingly beautiful all at once, an unfiltered story of humanity. I would even call this is a seminal film in the documentary genre. The fresh perspective we get from Waad Al-Khateab making this is phenomenal. There’s…

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The New York Times reports: The House voted Friday to curb President Trump’s ability to strike Iran militarily on Friday, adopting a bipartisan provision that would require the president to get Congress’s approval before authorizing military force against Tehran. The 251-170 vote reflects lawmakers’ growing desire to take back long-ceded authority over matters of war and peace from the executive branch, a reclamation legislators contend has grown increasingly urgent amid escalating tensions with Iran. It also reflected a war weariness…

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Patrick Wintour writes: A chain of events has been triggered that is increasingly exposing the UK diplomatically and militarily in the Gulf. The UK has put British shipping on maximum alert in the Gulf, just as the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is forced to admit that – due to successive defence cuts – the UK does not have the resources to defend British vessels. Simultaneously, the UK is battling diplomatically to keep the nuclear deal with Iran alive – a…

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Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon write: Who really bombed the oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman three weeks ago? Was it Iran, as the Trump administration assured us? Or was it Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or Israel—or some combination of the three? Here’s a confession from two former senior government officials: For days after the attacks, we weren’t sure. Both of us believed in all sincerity there was a good chance these actions were part of a…

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Alex Ward writes: A deadly opening attack. Nearly untraceable, ruthless proxies spreading chaos on multiple continents. Costly miscalculations. And thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — killed in a conflict that would dwarf the war in Iraq. Welcome to the US-Iran war, which has the potential to be one of the worst conflicts in history. Washington and Tehran remain locked in a months-long standoff with no end in sight. The US has imposed crushing sanctions on Iran’s economy over its…

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Natalie Nougayrède writes: Putin is so good at exploiting our obsessions and weak spots: it’s a tactic he’s long perfected to deflect attention from his own record. Clear the fog a bit, and what is there, really? Russia’s sense of its impunity – I mean big time, murderous, war criminal-style impunity. Think about this: at the end of this year, Russia – whether in its Soviet or post-Soviet incarnations – will have been at war almost continuously for four decades….

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Bill Scher writes: Ploughshares Fund President Joseph Cirincione, an anti-nuclear weapons activist who informally advises Sanders, told me: “I think Senator Sanders would not hesitate to use military force to defend the country from attack, to defend our vital interests, to prevent atrocities like genocide. But he’s made clear that military force should be the very, very last option.” For a small but noticeable anti-Bernie strain on the far left, that wiggle room for military strikes makes Sanders a hypocrite….

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Jack Shafer writes: Proving his excellence once again at serving as an arsonist and the leader of the fire brigade at the same time, President Donald Trump, who has been publicly spoiling for a military scrap with Iran, took credit this morning for both ordering a military strike on three of the country’s military installations and then canceling the mission 10 minutes before go time. Crisis averted! This is far from the first time Trump has run this play. As…

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Julian Borger reports: The incident that came close to sparking a new war in the Middle East began late on Wednesday night at the Al Dhafr air base in the United Arab Emirates, just over 30km south of Abu Dhabi. The base is home to the UAE’s air force and a fluctuating number of US warplanes, including Global Hawk drones, used to fly high above the Persian Gulf looking down on the constant flow of oil tankers and northwards, sucking…

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The Washington Post reports: President Trump stepped away from the precipice of an immediate military conflict with Iran on Friday, calling off a strike in response to Iran’s downing of a U.S. surveillance drone. But with the United States and Iran still locked in an adversarial pose, with none of their underlying grievances resolved, the prospect for fresh brinkmanship loomed as U.S. officials contemplated an alternative response. Key Trump allies on Capitol Hill said Friday that they expected the president…

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The New York Times reports: President Trump said Friday morning that the United States military had been “cocked and loaded” for a strike against Iran on Thursday night, but that he called it off with 10 minutes to spare when a general told him that 150 people would probably die in the attack. ….On Monday they shot down an unmanned drone flying in International Waters. We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I…

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Ardeshir Zahedi and Ali Vaez write: We belong to two very different generations of Iranians. One of us served in senior official positions in the pro-Western monarchy that ruled Iran prior to the 1979 Islamic revolution; the other is a child of that revolution. One presided over the golden age of Iran-U.S. relations; the other was subject to years of state-sponsored anti-American indoctrination. Yet, despite these differences, we share a sense of belonging to both countries and grave concerns about…

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In an editorial, the New York Times says: With opposing military forces in such proximity [the Gulf of Oman], with accusations and munitions flying and with the White House facing a trust deficit, the danger of open conflict increases by the day. Which is why, if Mr. Trump and the Warhawk Caucus — led by the national security adviser, John Bolton; the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo; and Senator Tom Cotton — want a wider military conflict with Iran, they…

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The New York Times reports: President Trump approved military strikes against Iran in retaliation for downing an American surveillance drone, but pulled back from launching them on Thursday night after a day of escalating tensions. As late as 7 p.m., military and diplomatic officials were expecting a strike, after intense discussions and debate at the White House among the president’s top national security officials and congressional leaders, according to multiple senior administration officials involved in or briefed on the deliberations….

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