What is Iran’s choice? Deadly Tanker Attack or hope for the Nuclear Deal

How Iran’s Deadly Tanker Attack Is Linked to the Nuclear Deal

Not responding to a drone attack on Oman could actually impair progress on a deal.

How should the United States respond to Iran’s July 31 drone attack on the Mercer Street, a Japanese-owned, Liberian-flagged, Israeli-managed oil products tanker in international waters off the coast of Oman, killing the Romanian captain and a British crewmember?

The United States was obviously not a direct target of the Iranian attack. But Washington, together with other maritime powers, is the ultimate guarantor of freedom of navigation in the world’s oceans—a vital U.S. interest. The United States shares with other countries responsible for protecting this essential principle, deterring assaults on it, and punishing egregious violations.

At the same time, the ship attack is, of course, part of the broader gray-zone campaigns Iran is waging in multiple arenas with the United States and—sometimes separately, sometimes jointly—with Israel. And it would be unwise to delink either the ship attack or the gray-zone campaign from the ongoing negotiations between Iran, the United States, and other powers over a possible return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

There is undoubtedly a debate underway in Washington about these linkages and how any response to the ship attack will impact the JCPOA talks. The U.S. decision to identify Iran as the culprit on Aug. 1 and promise, in the words of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “an appropriate response,” reflects an important stage in the debate over how Washington should act.

Read original on Foreign Policy

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/08/11/iran-nuclear-deal-drone-attack-mercer-street-tanker-jcpoa-blinken-maritime-security/