US to send additional troops to the Middle East

The US will send an additional 1,000 troops to the Middle East, as Washington makes the case that Tehran is behind recent attacks on oil shipping in the region.

"I have authorized approximately 1,000 additional troops for defensive purposes to address air, naval and ground-based threats in the Middle East," acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan said today. "The recent Iranian attacks validate the reliable, credible intelligence we have received on hostile behavior by the Iranian forces and their proxy groups that threaten the US personnel and interests across the region." The US last month announced plans to deploy an additional 1,500 troops to the region on top of the roughly 10,000 personnel stationed there.

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo last week blamed Tehran for attacks on six tankers in separate incidents in May and June. Pompeo reached out to his colleagues in Europe and east Asia to explain the US assessment behind the accusation, the State Department said.

"Very little of our crude oil comes through the Gulf these days," Pompeo said in a televised interview yesterday. "China is reliant for over 80pc of its crude oil. Japan, South Korea, Indonesia – these countries are very dependent on freedom of navigation (through) these straits." Washington expects support from those countries to rein in Iran, Pompeo said. "There is no doubt. The intelligence community has lots of data, lots of evidence."

The UK government has backed the claim, but many US allies, including Japan and Germany, so far have not. The public evidence released by the US is circumstantial, based on video footage and pictures of Iranian naval vessels in the vicinity of two tankers struck in the Gulf of Oman on 13 June and on an assessment that only Iran is capable of such attacks.

Tehran has dismissed the claims and has denied any involvement, even though it has warned in the past that oil flow through the strait of Hormuz would be at risk if US sanctions succeed in cutting off crude exports from Iran.

In the US, congressional Democrats and presidential hopefuls from that party are warning President Donald Trump's administration against provoking a conflict with Iran and suggest that its decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal last year inflamed tensions. Iran announced today that it is ramping up the rate of enrichment of its low-grade enriched uranium, selectively abandoning one of the constraints on its nuclear program that was set by the nuclear deal.

"We do ourselves no favors by saber-rattling at this time. War with Iran is in no one's interest, and we must take every action at hand to prevent that from happening," California senator Dianne Feinstein, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said.

The administration's public messaging aims to hit back against accusations that its actions prompted Iran to resume work on its nuclear program, even though the US withdrew from the nuclear agreement under the premise that it did not sufficiently contain Iran. The State Department's Iran special envoy Brian Hook is scheduled to brief a House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee panel on 19 June.

Administration officials also have to reconcile the long-standing US policy of ensuring the freedom of oil navigation in the Mideast Gulf with Trump's stated aversion to embroiling the US in another military conflict in the region.

"This is an international challenge. This is important to the entire globe. The US is going to make sure that we take all the actions necessary, diplomatic and otherwise" to ensure the freedom of navigation in the Middle East, Pompeo said.

"The US does not seek conflict with Iran. The action today is being taken to ensure the safety and welfare of our military personnel working throughout the region and to protect our national interests," Shanahan said.

Pompeo tomorrow will travel to Florida for meetings with the senior commanders of the US Central Command, which oversees military forces in the Middle East, the State Department said.

Trump is also in Florida tomorrow, planning to formally launch his 2020 re-election campaign.