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Americans should know that Persian Gulf is not American lake: Former US diplomat

In this file photo taken on November 19, 2019 (L-R) the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (L), the air-defense destroyer HMS Defender and the guided-missile destroyer USS Farragut transit the Strait of Hormuz. (AFP photo)

Americans should leave the Middle East region as soon as possible and “they should not think that the Persian Gulf is really an American lake,” a former American diplomat has said.

J. Michael Springmann, former US diplomat in Saudi Arabia, made the remakrs in an interview with Press TV on Friday while commenting on a statement by a senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) who has censured the United States for conducting military drills in the Persian Gulf, saying the era of US military presence in the region is coming to an end.

The IRGC deputy commander for political affairs, Brigadier General Yadollah Javani, said in an interview with Tasnim News Agency in Tehran on Monday that what the US is doing under the guise of "military exercises to enhance security in the Persian Gulf and assisting its allies," is, in fact, part of efforts aimed at consolidating its presence in the region.

Springmann said that “Javani is entirely correct when he says that ‘the United States is a major source of instability in the region and that American warships and soldiers and missiles, and aircraft, and so forth are major causes for the instability in the area.’”

“I might be inclined to say that the general is a bit optimistic in saying that the Americans will withdraw. I think the Americans are going to stay there as long as they possibly can, and as long as they believe that they can work to disrupt the region and ensure that Iran is not a functioning country anymore just as they've done to Iraq and Libya and Syria,” he added.

“I believe that he is entirely correct though in saying that if the Americans attack Iran, they will in fact get a bloody nose that the Iranian forces are ready to retaliate for any attack on the country. And I think the Americans are desperate to have one,” he stated.  

“But I think that the wiser heads in the political and military departments of the American government realize that this is a bridge too far, a war too far and that the recent shipment of oil from Iran to Venezuela including gasoline components in parts, I think, shows that the Americans are unable to control the entire world, to the extent that they want to and that in the past they've done so,” he said.

“I believe that the Brigadier General Javani is entirely correct in stating that the Americans are at the end of the rope that they've overreached themselves, that there aren't enough soldiers, Sailors, and Marines to continue the aggression in the region, and that they should go home, that it's in their best interest to go home and that it's the American people will eventually realize that after this virus hysteric, that has been whipped up, see clearly that the Americans should not be in the region, they should not think that the Persian Gulf is really an American lake,” he concluded.


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