While Australians weathered the end days of an election campaign that focused almost exclusively on domestic affairs, global attention centred upon dangerously rising tension between Iran and the US.
On May 5, Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, John Bolton, announced that due to “troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” the US had dispatched an aircraft-carrier strike group and a bomber taskforce to the Persian Gulf “to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force’’.
This week, it was revealed the White House was considering deploying further forces. “The military capabilities being discussed include sending additional ballistic missile defence systems, Tomahawk cruise missiles on submarines, and surface ships with land attack capabilities for striking at a long range,’’ CNN has reported. Associated Press said the Pentagon would present the White House with a plan to send 10,000 extra troops to the region.
The deployment comes a year after the US unilaterally abandoned the landmark deal between Iran, the US and its European allies to limit its nuclear program, and six months after the US reimposed devastating sanctions upon Iran. In April, the US designated the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organisation.
Read the editorial in The Age.