Iran reportedly shot down a United States Navy drone on Thursday, which President Donald Trump subsequently called “a very big mistake,” per Al Jazeera . The missile allegedly hit an MQ-4C drone over the Strait of Hormuz, which is the same location as the attack on two oil tankers last week that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia accused Iran of orchestrating.
Now, The Daily Caller reports that an Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander said the incident was meant to send “a clear message” to America — that although the country isn’t looking for a fight, it’s “ready for war.”
Tensions in the Middle East have been increasing since National Security Advisor John Bolton said that the United States sent a bomber task force and an aircraft carrier strike group to the region in response to “a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings.” On Monday, tensions continued to escalate after the U.S. announced Monday that it was sending 1,000 troops to the region.
As The Inquisitr previously reported, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard recently warned that the escalating tensions with Iran will no doubt lead to war unless President Donald Trump changes his approach to dealing with the country.
“Iran war is HIGHLY likely unless Trump swallows his pride & returns to the Iran nuclear agreement he tore up. But I fear he won’t put the interests of our country & those who’ll be killed in such a war ahead of his own pride & personal political interests.”
The Gulf of Oman incident must not be used as a pretext for war with Iran. War would be an unmitigated disaster for the United States, Iran, the region, and the world. A unilateral U.S. attack on Iran would be illegal and unconstitutional. https://t.co/D8QK7k50Ur
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) June 14, 2019
Although Trump told Piers Morgan, co-host of Good Morning Britain, there was a “chance” that the U.S. would resort to military intervention in Iran, he also said that he would rather not.
But the Pentagon recently posted and quickly deleted a new nuclear weapons policy that experts call “unsettling” and “disturbing, per The Inquisitr . The policy appears to be moving away from the traditional nuclear policy of deterrence to a more aggressive one that uses nuclear weapons for attack. The discovery has experts warning that it could increase the chances of a nuclear war.
One of the scarier passages says that “using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability.”
Patricia Lewis, research director for international security at the British think tank Chatham House, claims that the policy is a big change from the Obama-era “defensive” nuclear weapons philosophy and a move to one that would see nuclear weapons used as primary weapons in combat.
“That’s very disturbing, because where is the nuclear threat coming from?”
