LONDON: Iran made a “big mistake” in attacking a commercial tanker last week, claiming the life of a British Army veteran, the chief of general staff and the UK’s most senior soldier said on Wednesday.
“What we need to be doing, fundamentally, is calling out Iran for its very reckless behavior,” Gen. Sir Nick Carter told the BBC. “We’ve got to restore deterrence because it’s behavior like that which leads to escalation, and that could very easily lead to miscalculation, and that would be very disastrous for all the peoples of the Gulf and the international community.”
The attack on the Liberian-flagged Mercer Street tanker killed a Briton and Romanian. The Briton has been identified as Fiji-born Adrian Underwood, a married father who was working as a security contractor when the tanker was struck in Omani waters. The UK and Romania have blamed the drone strike on Iran.
Tehran is accused of masterminding maritime attacks since 2019, with tankers linked to both Saudi Arabia and Israel — its major rivals — being blighted by mines and other explosive assaults.
Furthermore, investigators determined that drones and missiles that struck a major Saudi oilfield were manufactured in Iran, which has ratcheted up its maritime attacks in recent months, allegedly launching strikes on vessels linked to Israel.
“Gen. Carter said Iran made a ‘big mistake’ by carrying out the attack that killed Underwood since it has ‘internationalized’ the response, and he’s obviously correct that deterrence needs to be restored because without it Iran will continue escalating,” Kyle Orton, an independent geopolitical researcher, told Arab News.
“The question now is over what form this response takes. So far, the discussion within the British government seems to be about options that are covert and in the cyber realm, neither of which are adequate,” he added.
“If the response to murdering a British citizen isn’t overt, kinetic retaliation, then it will fail. The Iranians — who are quite sensitive to the limits they can push — will conclude that the cost of lethal attacks on us is tolerable.”
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said his country is “working on enlisting the world” in response to the tanker strike, but warned Iran that “we also know how to act alone.”
He added: “The Iranians need to understand that it is impossible to sit peacefully in Tehran and from there ignite the entire Middle East. That is over.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called for a “collective response” to the assault, which British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called an “outrageous attack on commercial shipping.”
On Monday, Britain summoned Iranian Ambassador Mohsen Baharvand to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to demand that vessels be allowed to freely navigate the region’s waters. On the same day, Iran said it would respond promptly to any threat to its security.
Iran made ‘big mistake’ with tanker attack: UK’s top soldier
https://arab.news/4faet
Iran made ‘big mistake’ with tanker attack: UK’s top soldier
- Gen. Nick Carter slams Tehran “reckless behavior,” urges West to “restore deterrence”
- Response to Iranian aggression must be kinetic, not just cyber, analyst tells Arab News
Video shows armed men beating a Palestinian in West Bank
- The previous incident was in September and cost the business more than $600,000 as offices and facilities were damaged, he said
TEL AVIV: Dozens of masked men armed with sticks beat and injured a Palestinian in the Israeli-occupied West Bank when they attacked a plant nursery, according to people who saw the attack and video footage obtained by The Associated Press.
Video filmed by security cameras shows men dressed mostly in black, faces covered, with several hitting and kicking a man on the ground.
Two witnesses who are members of the family that owns the facility said Israeli settlers beat 67-year-old Basim Saleh Yassin as he was trying to flee the German-Palestinian-run nursery in the northern West Bank village of Deir Sharaf. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
BACKGROUND
The attack is the latest in rising Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, where assaults increased during the Palestinian olive harvest in October and have continued.
Workers fled when they saw the settlers coming on Thursday but Yassin is deaf and couldn’t hear the warnings to leave, one family member said.
The witnesses said Yassin was in the hospital with broken bones in his hand and other injuries to his face, chest and back. Four cars at the nursery were burned.
The attack is the latest in rising Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, where assaults increased during the Palestinian olive harvest in October and have continued.
Israeli authorities have done little beyond issuing occasional condemnations of the violence.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the perpetrators “a handful of extremists” and urged law enforcement to pursue them for “the attempt to take the law into their own hands.”
But rights groups and Palestinians say the problem is far greater than a few bad actors, and attacks have become a daily phenomenon across the territory.
Israel’s army said it dispatched soldiers to the Shavei Shomron junction — close to the area of Thursday’s attack — following reports of dozens of masked Israelis vandalizing property.
The army said it apprehended three suspects who were taken to police for questioning. It said security forces condemn violence of any kind.
According to one of the family members who own the nursery, it was the third time in a year that the facility was attacked.
The previous incident was in September and cost the business more than $600,000 as offices and facilities were damaged, he said.
In the video of Thursday’s attack, Yassin runs from a group of masked people before falling to the ground.
One man kicks him and another hits him twice with what appears to be a stick. Yassin stays on his knees as he’s struck again and then places his hands on the ground.
As the men are leaving, one kicks him in the head while others strike him again until he’s seen lying on the pavement.
