Personally, I do not believe for a moment that Iran is responsible for the recent attacks on commercial vessels in the Gulf. They have nothing to gain by it, and a lot to lose. Nothing like this has been done by Iran since the second Gulf War, and there is no reason for them to do it now.
This is part of the build up to rationalise an attack on Iran, which I do not think is likely to happen; but the build up itself is useful for numerous reasons
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