US Sanctions Strangle Iran as It Escalates Against Gulf States, Except Oman
Its pilots are in water detention in Qatar! Its officers are in a dark cell in Kuwait! And its missiles are aimed at Saudi and Emirati oil!
Iran is escalating its pressures and threats against the Gulf states—except Oman—as expected and at an accelerating pace, especially as the more severe and stringent US sanctions take effect and the acute economic crisis worsens due to the American naval blockade and the closure of Iranian ports—a consequence Iran brought upon itself by blockading Hormuz and global energy, choking the strait against navigation and tankers.
A commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard: “Our pilots are being held by Qatar in waters (...) and they are in poor health. We call on the Red Cross to send an air ambulance to transfer our pilots in Qatar to Iran.”
The pilots Iran and its Guards speak of are those who bombed Qatar and targeted Qatar’s largest gas facility. Qatari air defenses shot down their aircraft, and Qatar announced it had found the remains of one while the other is missing. Qatar invited Iran to send a committee to examine the remains, but Iran refused and postponed the matter to use it as a lever of pressure and blackmail at a time like this, to escalate against Qatar—the most important and closest mediator to Iran—in order to extract concessions regarding frozen funds that the US prevents from being paid to Iran. Iran even demands sending a security and military delegation to Qatar to investigate its alleged pilots and to violate Qatari sovereignty, showing no shame even in sending its pilots and a warplane to bomb vital Qatari facilities, on top of waves of missiles and drones.
This escalation coincides with pressures and escalation against Kuwait regarding Revolutionary Guard officers who were sent to violate sovereignty and infiltrate Kuwaiti territory and a Kuwaiti island during Iran’s aggression against Kuwait and the Gulf states. Kuwaiti naval forces arrested them, and Iran remained silent, also postponing the issue until this timing to use it as a blackmail card and a weapon of threat and escalation.
All this coincides with Iran’s crude escalatory rhetoric against the Gulf states, but especially against Saudi Arabia and the UAE, threatening to target oil facilities and oil pipelines inside both countries, claiming that the pipelines are tantamount to firing missiles at Iran and an act of war against it—because a significant part of Saudi oil exports remains distant and safe from the crisis and terrorism of Hormuz and the Revolutionary Guard via the East-West line to Yanbu in Saudi Arabia, as well as the Fujairah line in the UAE. Now that Trump has apparently abandoned—at least for now—the military option in favor of a war of sanctions and economic strangulation, Iran does not lack a pretext to market aggression and hostilities, as it has done before, against the Gulf states, especially the Kingdom. Iran even considers that the transfer pipelines, which have always been there, have now become merely a spite against the great—but militarily broken, economically crushed, and humanly and genially cursed—Iran, and that these pipelines help Iran’s enemies reduce the importance of the Strait of Hormuz. It demands that the Gulf states mortgage their oil, interests, economy, and sovereignty to the account of terrorism and the Revolutionary Guard, enabling Iran to use Hormuz against the Gulf states, their oil, trade, economy, and national and homeland security!!
What absurdity is this, and what accursed devil thinks on behalf of the Iranians and formulates their damned, insolent, and insane arguments and pleas?!
Iran also directed its Houthi arm to escalate against Saudi oil, exports, and tankers directly in the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb, and just as Iran does, it coached its Houthi hireling with fraudulent pretexts and justifications of the same Iranian cut-and-paste style.
All of this gives you a picture of the intensifying and boiling chronic Iranian hostility toward Arabs, especially the Gulf and Peninsula Arabs, and where it might go in this downward spiral, as we do not know where Iran’s vendettas and aggression will end.
Israel no longer responds on behalf of Iranians or in their statements.
