The Thirst For War With Iran Is Real

Sen. Tom Cotton, one of the absolute worst members of Congress, is urging the U.S. to take a “retaliatory military strike” against Iran.

Speaking on CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday morning, Cotton blamed Iran for recent attacks on Japanese and Norwegian oil tankers in the Middle East.

“These unprovoked attacks on commercial shipping warrant a retaliatory military strike,” Cotton told CBS.

Of course, both critics and American allies like Germany are pressing for more concrete evidence about the attacks, and the U.S. has done everything in its power over the last several months to encourage tension with Iran.

But none of that bothers Cotton.

“The fastest way to get the fire and fury of the U.S. military unleashed on you is to interfere with the freedom of navigation on the open seas and in the air. That’s exactly what Iran is doing in one of the world’s most important strategic choke points,” he told CBS.

The Trump administration is still gunning for war as well. Earlier on Face the Nation, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told CBS that the “full range” of responses to the attacks was being considered.

Cotton tried to separate the current call to war from previous conflicts like Iraq which were based on false evidence.

“In 2002, our intelligence agencies, just like every Western intelligence agency, was trying to assess the state of a weapons of mass destruction program, one of the things that states worked the hardest to keep secret,” Cotton said.

He assured CBS that there’s solid evidence that Iran attacked the tankers.

“There’s really not much to assess right here. Everybody can see with their own two eyes, those Iranian sailors going up to a ship and taking a mine off of it,”he told CBS.

Not everyone agrees with this assessment. Japan, which owned one of the tankers that was attacked, has asked for more evidence that Iran was to blame. The owner of the tanker said they believed it was hit with a “flying object,” not a mine, as the U.S. claims.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has doubts too.

“The video is not enough,” he told reporters. “We can understand what is being shown, sure, but to make a final assessment, this is not enough for me.”