The “Death To America” Crowd

Tensions have risen in the Persian Gulf when the Trump Administration revoked waivers on the importation of Iranian oil.  Since May, the Islamic Republic of Iran has attacked numerous oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz and shot down an American spy drone over international air space.

The drone shoot-down was only the latest flare-up in the region tied to Iran.

President Trump was prepared to retaliate against the rogue nation but ordered a stand down after it was determined the action would have been disproportionate.  That action would have killed upwards of 150 people on the ground.  The drone was unmanned.  The stand down order was widely criticized on both sides of the aisle.

Those critics, of course, did not have at their disposal the intelligence reports provided by the Pentagon to the President.  It turns out retaliatory cyber attacks were carried out against Iran even as he called off the airstrikes.

Rep. Maxine “Dumbass” Waters (D-CA) pumped out a series of tweets accusing the President of wanting to go to war with Iran claiming the downed U.S. drone was flying in Iran’s airspace. 

Trump, you get no credit for so-called stopping the strike against Iran. Why was the unmanned drone in Iran's airspace? Why the surveillance? Don't provoke and then pretend innocence.

— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) June 23, 2019

Trump, we know you are angling for war with Iran. Stop it now. Iran was in compliance with the JCPOA. You and Netanyahu had better not try to take us to war. We don't need it & Israel doesn't need it.

— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) June 23, 2019

National Security Advisor John Bolton has repeatedly insisted Washington had “held the door open to real negotiations” and that “in response, Iran's silence has been deafening.”

On Monday the President signed an executive order with new hard-hitting sanctions on Iran directly targeted at Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei after what he called a “series of aggressive behaviors” by the regime.

He said the Ayatollah's own finances would now be in U.S. crosshairs. “I'll be signing an Executive Order imposing hard-hitting sanctions on the Supreme Leader of Iran, on the Office of the Supreme Leader of Iran and many others.”

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani declared the new sanctions are “outrageous and idiotic” and will fail because Ayatollah Khamenei, one of the main targets, has no foreign assets.

According to a published report from Bloomberg, Khamenei “has possession valued at an estimated $200 billion.”  He’s backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). 

The U.S. Treasury Department said on Monday the new sanctions will include eight officials of the IRGC who “supervised malicious regional activities” including its ballistic missile program and “harassment and sabotage” of commercial ships in international waters.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi warned, “The fruitless sanctions on Iran’s leadership and the chief of Iranian diplomacy mean the permanent closure of the road of diplomacy.”

Last week’s tanker and drone attacks were the desperate actions of a government trying to provoke an American response.

Iran is home to the world’s fourth-largest proven reserve of crude oil and holds the world’s second-largest proven reserve of natural gas, after Russia.

Under President Trump’s maximum-pressure campaign, the U.S. has cut off Iran’s ability to sell crude on the global market and threatened to sanction any nation that purchases it. Oil covers a third of the $80 billion a year the government spends in Iran, meaning that a fall in oil revenues cuts into its social welfare programs, as well as its military expenditures.

Good. Keep them hemmed in. Four more years of President Trump could almost certainly mean less than four more years for the mullahs of the Islamic Republic.

UPDATE:  Welcome readers of Bad Blue Uncensored News.  We thank Doug Ross for linking to this post.