{"id":190012,"date":"2019-06-16T08:00:44","date_gmt":"2019-06-16T08:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=190012"},"modified":"2019-06-20T06:16:54","modified_gmt":"2019-06-20T06:16:54","slug":"japan-dismisses-us-claim-that-iran-attacked-tankers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=190012","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Japan dismisses US claim that Iran attacked tankers\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Press TV \u2013 June 16, 2019<\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

A photograph released by the US military claiming to show damage to the Kokuka Courageous and a suspected limpet mine Photograph: U.S. Central Command<\/p><\/div>\n

Japanese officials say Tokyo has dismissed a claim by the United States that Iran attacked two oil tankers \u2014 both of them carrying \u201cJapanese-related\u201d cargo \u2014 in the Sea of Oman.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Japan\u2019s Kyodo news agency cited informed state officials as saying Tokyo had demanded that Washington examine the case further, and that grainy video footage released<\/strong><\/span><\/a> by the US as supposed evidence was unclear and could not be used to prove anything.<\/span><\/p>\n

One official said the Japanese government was not convinced by the material, which the official called \u201cnothing beyond speculation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The official said Japan\u2019s Foreign\u00a0Minister Taro Kono had in a Friday phone conversation with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanded more data in the case.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous and Norwegian-owned Front Altair oil tankers were struck by explosions near the strategic Strait of Hormuz on Thursday morning. Japan\u2019s government said both vessels were carrying \u201cJapanese-related\u201d cargo.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shortly after the two tankers were hit by the explosions, Pompeo blamed Iran. A day later, US President Donald Trump made a similar claim. Neither offered any evidence, and the footage that was released was said by US officials to show Iranian personnel\u00a0removing an \u201cunexploded\u201d mine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Iran has rejected the allegations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Experts have said the explosions\u00a0could have been false flags to implicate Iran at the time of\u00a0a historic visit<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Iran, a first of its kind in more than 40 years. Prime Minister Abe was meeting with Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei when the explosions happened.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Kyodo, a source close to Prime Minister Abe also said that the footage did not prove an Iranian attack.<\/span><\/p>\n

Separately, a Japanese Foreign Ministry source said the attack being sophisticated was no\u00a0reason to blame Iran. Such a characteristic, according to the source, could also implicate the US and Israel \u2014 Iran\u2019s main adversaries.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Japanese operator of one of the tankers also said it had been hit by \u201ca flying object<\/strong><\/span><\/a>,\u201d not a mine.<\/span><\/p>\n

A short while after the incident, Iranian rescue officials picked up a distress signal sent by the tankers and scrambled a vessel, which then safely removed the crew<\/a> from the waters around their burning ships.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018The video means nothing!\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Independent intelligence experts have expressed doubts about whether the footage released by the US incriminates Iran, as US officials have claimed.<\/span><\/p>\n

William Church, a former military investigator for the United Nations Security Council, told Newsweek on Saturday that the US had doctored evidence before.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe US track record on ginning up evidence for war is not good,\u201d he said. \u201cIt lied in the run-up to the Vietnam war [by inventing a North Vietnamese attack on a US Navy ship in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964], and it lied about WMD (weapons of mass destruction) before the Iraq war. So when these tanker attacks happen, we have to ask why and what\u2019s the motivation in addition to examining the evidence.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Church said much more needed to be known.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe video means nothing. We need to know how it was taken, when was it taken, what was the total sequence. Then you\u2019d have to talk to the people in the video to get their view of what happened. I would check to see if the video was doctored. You would need to do everything that a trained investigator would do,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ayham Kamel, the head of Middle East analysis for the Eurasia Group, an international risk analysis consultancy, suggested that Saudi Arabia might have carried out attacks on the tankers to blame them on Iran because Riyadh was increasingly under pressure from retaliatory strikes by Yemeni Houthis, whom the Saudis claim are Iranian-backed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Saudis are alarmed [by the retaliatory Yemeni strikes,\u201d Kamel said. \u201cTheir response is going to be to try to pressure the US into action.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Anthony Cordesman, a strategic analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, also raised the possibility that Riyadh, or Abu Dhabi or Daesh, could have been behind the incidents.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne has to keep asking the question, well, if it isn\u2019t Iran, who the hell is it?\u201d he said. \u201cYou come up with the possibility that ISIS (Daesh) carried out the attack as trigger to turn two enemies \u2014 the United States and Iran \u2014 against each other. Or you\u2019re watching Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates create an incident that they can then use to increase the pressure on Iran.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth of the matter is either you have evidence, or you don\u2019t,\u201d he added. \u201cIs there hard evidence that Iran is guilty? The answer is no.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One Japanese official said the government was unconvinced and called claims that Iran was behind the attacks \u201cnothing beyond speculation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Iran"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=190012"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190016,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190012\/revisions\/190016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=190012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=190012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=190012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}