Exploring motive behind attack on Israeli ship

What makes the attack on Mercer Street puzzling is its timing, as it occurred just days before the inauguration of the newly elected president of Iran, the ultraconservative hardliner Ebrahim Raisi.

Could Raisi have ordered a provocative attack on an Israeli-managed vessel, just days before taking office, when his highest priority is a lifting of the "maximum pressure" sanctions imposed on his country by former President Donald Trump? Why?

Would Raisi put at risk his principal diplomatic goal, just to get even with Israel for some earlier pinprick strike in the tit-for-tat war in which Iran and Israel have been engaged for years? Again, why?

If not Raisi, could the outgoing president, the moderate Hassan Rouhani, have ordered such an attack on his last hours in office and risk igniting a war with Israel and the US that his country could not win?

Could the attack have been the work of rogue elements in the Iranian Republican Guard Corps? Gantz and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid claim that Saeed Ara Jani, head of the drones section of the IRGC, "is the man personally responsible for the terror attacks in the Gulf of Oman."

Or was this simply a reflexive Iranian reprisal for Israeli attacks?

For years, Israel and Iran have been in a shadow war, with Iran backing Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and the Shia militia in Syria and Iraq.

Israel has both initiated and responded to attacks with strikes on Iranian-backed militia in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, and by sabotaging Iran’s nuclear program and assassinating its nuclear scientists.

But whoever was behind the attack in the Gulf of Oman, and whatever the political motive, the US was not the target, and the US should not respond militarily to a drone strike that was not aimed at us.

No one has deputized us to police the Middle East, and we have not prospered these last two decades by having deputized ourselves.

With America leaving Afghanistan and US troops in Iraq transiting out of any "combat" role, now is not the time to get us ensnared in a new war with Iran.

It was in an August, 57 years ago, that the Tonkin Gulf incident occurred, which led America to plunge into an eight-year war in Vietnam.

President Joe Biden’s diplomatic goal with Iran, since taking office, has been the resurrection of the 2015 nuclear deal from which former President Donald Trump walked away. In return for Iran’s reacceptance of strict conditions on its nuclear program, the US has offered a lifting of Trump’s sanctions.

Whoever launched the drone strike sought to ensure that no new US-Iran deal is consummated, that US sanctions remain in place, and that a US war with Iran remain a possibility.

But, again, why would Tehran carry out such a drone attack and kill crewmen on an Israeli-managed vessel – then loudly deny it?

Since he took office, Biden has revealed his intent to extricate the US from the "forever wars" of the Middle East and to pivot to the Far East and China. By this month’s end, all US forces are to be out of Afghanistan, and the 2,500 US troops still in Iraq are to be repurposed, no longer to be designated as combat troops.

Those behind this attack on the Israeli-managed vessel do not want to reduce the possibility of war between the United States and Iran.