Posted on 06/24/2019 2:51:39 AM PDT by familyop
Jeremy Hunt says Britain would consider joining the US in military action against Iran.
Tensions between the US and Iran have increased in recent weeks after the downing of an American drone, and claims by Washington that Tehran was behind attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.
The Foreign Secretary's comments came as Foreign Office minister Andrew Murrison held talks with the Tehran government at the weekend where he said he was "clear" about the UK's concerns over Iran's activities.
Mr Hunt said Britain would "stand by the United States as our strongest ally" and "weigh up military intervention in Iran on a case-by-case basis".
"We will stand by the United States as our strongest ally but of course we have to consider any requests for military support on a case-by-case basis," he told the Daily Mail.
"We do strongly believe that the solution is for Iran to stop its destabilising activity throughout the Middle East and we are very concerned about the sabotaging of tankers that has happened recently, which is almost certainly Iran, and we're constantly in touch with the United States.
"We want to de-escalate the situation but we are of course extremely worried."
Mr Hunt, who is battling to become the next Prime Minister, earlier said he has been speaking to counterparts "regularly" about the Iran crisis which he called "extremely serious".
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday that he was seeking to build a "global coalition" against Iran, branding Tehran "the world's largest state sponsor of terror".
They’d sure be stupid not to.
We have a naval base in Qatar and other assets in Oman. We’d get dragged into it whether we liked it or not. Iran hates us as much as it hates the US because of MI6’s role conniving with the CIA to entrench the Shah. One advisor to Ayatollah Khamenei even called us ‘worse than America’. If war breaks out with the US, they will not leave us alone.
For a split second, I thought the Boris/Hunt competition had now diverged from Brexit to joining the Union.
The UK is trying to get INSTEX off the ground in order to get around US sanctions and we’re supposed to believe the UK would participate in an attack on Iran?!
SNORT.
Given that they are the ones whose fault it is, ultimately, they had damn well better.
Yes. Note that the "experts" (and the dems piled on) were telling us that we had to attack Iran or "look weak." Trump dangled the probable myth that some dumb*** in Iran's military ordered the attack on the drone and they grabbed it. For us, lose/lose -> strategic win. Of course this is not the end of the Iran story, and we can't get complacent.
One country that stepped up is India, their Navy is offering military escorts to Indian flagged tankers.
The US Navy is still there, but it’s good that somebody from the community of sane nations is helping.
I believe the Armilla patrol is still going.
I wasn’t familiar with the Armilla patrol and had to look it up. Since British shipping would likely become a target if hostilities with Iran broke out, its probably a good thing their Navy has a presence there.
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