Wednesday, July 10, 2019 | 2 a.m.
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The writer of the June 28 letter “Don’t let Iran off the hook” thinks the United States should militarily counter Iran’s unprovoked attack on one of its drones. But in actuality, the U.S. has provoked Iran quite a bit.
We pulled out of a nuclear treaty which postponed, but didn’t stop, Iran from getting nuclear weapons — and did not address Iran’s building of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting us, or the fact that Iran is a sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East. Iran liked the treaty.
Also, the U.S. is at war with Iran financially. We are stopping its oil exports, which is its primary funding source, with the goal of forcing the country to negotiate the above-mentioned issues. Iranian leaders are really mad about that.
Iran is struggling to figure out how to get back at us, so it attacked some oil tankers and shot down a drone. Fortunately, Iran’s enemies, Saudi Arabia and Israel, are buying weapons from the U.S. to counter Iran’s aggression, which means the U.S. will not have to be so involved in a military conflict.
Even though we did not respond militarily to Iran, we did increase the oil sanctions and stopped many of its prominent people from using their funds which were moved overseas. That is a nontrivial response.
