TRUMP BLASTS IRAN
He rings US TV station to say: I know they’re behind attacks on Gulf oil tankers – and I’ve got the evidence
DONALD Trump yesterday rang a US TV show to insist that Iran was responsible for the attack on two tankers in the Gulf.
The US president called in apparently unprompted to say that grainy video footage claiming to show an unexploded mine being removed from one of the tankers was proof of Iran’s involvement.
The US military released a video that it says shows members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard recovering a limpet mine from the side of the Japaneseowned Kokuka Courageous in the Gulf of Oman, off the coast of Iran.
A military patrol boat appeared to pull up alongside the tanker to remove the mine on Thursday night following the attacks at dawn that day.
Mr Trump, who was celebrating his 73rd birthday, told the Fox & Friends breakfast show that the footage, shot from the USS Bainbridge destroyer under cover of darkness, ‘exposed’ Iran as being responsible.
‘Iran did do it,’ he said. ‘You know they did it because you saw the boat. I guess one of the mines didn’t explode and it’s probably got, essentially, Iran written all over it. They didn’t want the evidence left behind.’
Ominously, he warned Tehran that if it tried to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route that separates Iran and Oman, it would not stay closed ‘for long’.
‘They’re a nation of terror, and they’ve changed a lot since I’ve been president,’ Mr Trump said. ‘They’re in deep, deep trouble.’
Asked what the US intended to do next, Mr Trump replied: ‘We’re going to see how to stop these outrageous acts. We’ll see what happens, and we don’t take it lightly.’ Amid fears of escalating tensions in the region, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said last night: ‘I condemn yesterday’s attacks. Our own [independent] assessment leads us to conclude that responsibility for the attacks almost certainly lies with Iran.
‘These latest attacks build on a pattern of destabilising Iranian behaviour and pose a serious danger to the region. In targeting civilian shipping, international norms have been violated. It is essential that tankers and crews are able to pass through international waters safely. We call on Iran urgently to cease all forms of destabilising activity. The UK remains in close coordination with international partners to find diplomatic solutions to de-escalate tensions.’
Earlier, he said: ‘We are very worried about the situation in Iran because at the moment both sides in the dispute think that the other side doesn’t want war and the risk you have is that then they do something provocative that leads to catastrophic consequences that weren’t intended and so it’s a very dangerous situation.’
Dozens of crew members had to be rescued after explosions crippled both vessels. The Kokuka Courageous said it was hit twice and holed above the water line.
The head of the shipping company said crew members said they were ‘hit by a flying object’ before a second blast crippled the ship, with speculation they came under small arms fire at the same time.
Yesterday 21 crew rescued by the USS Bainbridge returned to the tanker so that it could be towed to port. The Norwegianowned Front Altair was the other tanker hit and a Dutch company has been appointed to salvage it.
Iran’s foreign ministry dismissed accusations that it attacked the tankers as ‘baseless’. Spokesman Abbas Mousavi said that blaming Iran was ‘convenient’ for US officials. Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that the US had ‘made allegations against Iran without a shred of factual or circumstantial evidence’.