After suffering humiliating defeat at UN Security Council, does Trump have October surprise in mind?

By Stephen Lendman

The claim by the Wall Street Journal that four Iranian tankers were intercepted carrying fuel to Venezuela, the US Justice Department and State Department confirmed the story. It's fake as Iran reported, but they confirmed the story.

What may have happened is that there may be some tankers seized. I don't know whose tankers they were carrying fuel. I don't know where it was going to, and the US just assumed this was fuel on Iranian tankers. Iranian tankers don't have emblazoned on the whole property of Iran. I'm sure they don't say that obviously. So, there's no easy way to identify a vessel of a country, except to know the name and I guess maybe a serial number, and then identify it that way.

But again, all US actions against Iran are interrelated. There's no question that the US is seizing … they knew they would lose the vote on Friday at the Security Council. The US needs 9 votes at the Security Council to go along with a policy that it wants instituted, any policy it wants instituted.

Well, Russia and China certainly would have vetoed the resolution that the US’s UN envoy Kelly Craft proposed. They would have vetoed it if the vetoes were needed but they weren't. And this may have been the single most humiliating defeat the US ever, ever experienced in the history of the UN and the Security Council. Only one other nation the Dominican Republic, which is a virtual US colony went along with what the US did, and everybody else did not. So it was 13 Nos to 2 Yeses and I say Nos – 11 countries abstained. That was another way of saying no, a diplomatic way of saying No.

US seeks to make up for UNSC failure with alleged seizure of Iranian tankers: Rouhani

President Rouhani says the US has tried to compensate for its political defeat at the Security Council with the fake news about the seizure of Iranian fuel tankers.

The US is waging war by other means on Iran. There'll be lots more things that it does to hit Iran. Not necessarily militarily, as there's been no US military attacks on Iran, at least nothing since General Soleimani was assassinated by the Pentagon. That certainly was a military attack. There could be incidents like that, but I don't see a war between the US and Iran.

But one thing bothers me greatly Trump is behind in the polls and if the US presidential election was held today, he would lose and Biden would win. Does he have an October surprise in mind? Is it a war that he may have in mind? Did he have something dramatic, much more dramatic than anything he's done up to now to try to turn things around?

The Israeli-UAE deal has no resonance with the US electorate. They don't pay any attention to stuff like that, they consume domestic issues and war erupts.

In September 2001, a few days after 9/11 George Bush's approval rating went from around 50% to 85%, and about a week later, it went to 90%. Does Trump want to do something to have the same effect, so we can beat Biden? Does he have a war in mind to do this, which is a strategy that Bush Cheney used?

Well, I don't have the answer to that, but we certainly will watch and the US election is not that far away, less than a couple of months. Less than a few months, I'm sorry, that's in a few months. So we'll see.

I would imagine Trump will do something. We'll just have to wait and see what it is. They just have a lot of dirty tricks that they want to pull on sovereign independent countries they don't control Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China, and so on.

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Stephen Lendman, born in 1934 in Boston, started writing on major world and national issues began in summer 2005. In early 2007, radio hosting followed. Lendman now hosts the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network three times weekly. Distinguished guests are featured. Listen live or archived. Major world and national issues are discussed. Lendman is a 2008 Project Censored winner and 2011 Mexican Journalists Club international journalism award recipient. He recorded this article for Press TV website.

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