Trump rails against Iran. But who’s listening?

Tensions between Iran and the United States continued to build over the weekend. President Trump and his lieutenants accused the regime in Tehran of launching attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman last week, pointing to apparent video evidence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard removing an unexploded mine from one of the targeted ships. “It’s probably got essentially Iran written all over it,” Trump said in his distinct syntax on Friday.

Appearing on television on Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Iran’s culpability in the affair was “unmistakable” and urged the world “to unite against this threat from this Islamic Republic.” A coterie of Washington hawks — in Congress and in the opinion pages of major newspapers — floated the possibility of retaliatory military strikes against Iranian naval targets, an eventuality Trump is supposedly eager to avoid.

Iran denies any involvement in the attack. The situation in the Middle East will occupy a morning sessionat the U.N. Security Council on Monday. But for all the Trump administration’s certainty and ire, the international response to the developments, with the exception of a handful of countries, has been rather muted.

View the complete June 17 article by Ishaan Tharoor on The Washington Post website here.