The Maersk Tigris Incident

Are we on the road to war with Iran?

Ron Paul, as usual, was prescient when he warned – in 2007 – of a Gulf of Tonkin type incident in the Persian Gulf that could bring us to the brink of war with Iran. The seizure by the Iranians of a commercial vessel flying under the Marshall Islands flag in the Gulf in order to collect a debt – the result of a legal judgment in a complaint which had wound its way through courts for 14 years – is being blown up out of all proportion by Washington, which has sent warships to the area in order to “guard” shipping and ensure “freedom of the seas.”

Here‘s a Washington Post piece claiming the Iranians violated international law when they seized the vessel, but apparently the same rules don’t apply to the Americans. No one raised much of a fuss, back in 1991, when the US seized a Panamanian-flagged ship accused of defrauding the US military: there was no court case, and yet the US claimed its civil forfeiture rules gave it the right to “arrest” the ship. And then there’s this 1987 case where the US seized a Liberian-flagged ship because the crew hadn’t been paid. This is the typical pattern where Washington is concerned: the rules, such as they are, can be bent according to the US government’s convenience.

The US State Department is claiming that they have a treaty obligation to defend Marshall Islands shipping “under the terms of an amended compact entered into force in 2004,” i.e., because the islands are, in effect, a US protectorate. However, initially, the Pentagon was singing a far different tune, saying no such obligation existed.

In fact, the US only has an obligation to defend its own flagged shipping, and US-flagged vessels can only qualify for that designation if they are US-owned and the crew is 75 percent American. The sudden radical extension of this principle to include parts of the far-flung American Empire, such as the Marshall Islands, and unspecified “other countries’ vessels,” is yet another attempt to provide a “legal” rationale for America’s self-appointed role as the guardian of global shipping.  more http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/05/03/the-maersk-tigris-inc...