The Trump administration’s demonisation of Iran benefits Saudi Arabia and Israel more than the US

Not content with stoking a trade war with China and skirmishes with other partners, US President Donald Trump seems in the mood to threaten real war, this time with Iran.

Are the recent reports of tanker sabotage in the Persian Gulf to become another Gulf of Tonkin incident, the contrived crisis which enlarged the Vietnam war by persuading Congress to enable US president Lyndon B. Johnson to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression”?

It is hard to know where Trump’s tweets and bombast will lead. His better instincts have been for quiet disengagement from the Afghan and Syrian conflicts. But his National Security Adviser John Bolton has no such inhibitions and seems to relish the prospect of one more try at “regime change” to reverse what have now been 40 years of failure of US policy towards Iran and which now make it necessary to present that country, weakened by years of sanctions, as a real and present threat to the US and its allies.