Bolton and Pompeo are being disingenuous with the American people. They are military hawks pushing for regime change in Iran. As such, they are crowding assets into the Persian Gulf with hopes of incurring an incident that provides them with the justification to escalate to war. Trump is an idiot and has little comprehension of the foreign policy issues involved.

Trump is placing honerous economic sanctions on Iran. In doing so, he alienated the moderate faction in Iran which was not anti-US, and provided fuel for the hardliners to recapture public opinion.

In fairness, Iran has been a bad actor in the past. They are not an innocent actor. The US engaged in regime change to install (another example of our meddling in sovereign countries politics) the Shah. The Shah pushed westernization too quickly for his conservative Islamic society. So they revolted and threw him out. This set the stage for an adversarial relationship in the area. Iran has been a terrorist haven and supporter of Hesbollah.

I do not know if we didn't understand the depth of the divide between the two principle factions of Islam: Sunni vs. Shite (its history is similar the conflicts between Catholics and Protestants). We hooked our wagon to Suadi Arabia who is Sunni (Suadi Arabia is a bad actor in the region), while Iran is Shia. We inserted ourselves into a historic religious war.

Basically it all comes down to controlling the flow of oil and gas out of the Persian Gulf.

Bolton and Pompeo are being disingenuous with the American people. They are military hawks pushing for regime change in Iran. As such, they are crowding assets into the Persian Gulf with hopes of incurring an incident that provides them with the justification to escalate to war. Trump is an idiot and has little comprehension of the foreign policy issues involved.

Trump is placing honerous economic sanctions on Iran. In doing so, he alienated the moderate faction in Iran which was not anti-US, and provided fuel for the hardliners to recapture public opinion.

In fairness, Iran has been a bad actor in the past. They are not an innocent actor. The US engaged in regime change to install (another example of our meddling in sovereign countries politics) the Shah. The Shah pushed westernization too quickly for his conservative Islamic society. So they revolted and threw him out. This set the stage for an adversarial relationship in the area. Iran has been a terrorist haven and supporter if Hesbollah.

I do not know if we didn't understand the depth of the divide between the two principle factions of Islam: Dunni vs. Shite (its history is similar

It's ridiculous to attack their economy and infrastructure, unilaterally pull out of a peace agreement and blackmail third parties who feel they should live up to their obligations and then whine about "unprovoked attacks"

First off, I do not see how the USA has any right to enforce an embargo on Iran, the USA has no international mandate for it. Second, Britain seized the Iranian tanker, also contrary to the international laws, in fact, piracy, so they are getting exactly what they deserve. All this arrogant bullshit by the USA and Britain is not going to end well for the planet.