President Donald Trump, warning that U.S. “restraint” towards Iran has limits, signed an executive order Monday imposing additional economic sanctions on the country, in apparent retaliation for the downing of a U.S. drone last week.
WGBH News analyst Charlie Sennott, in an interview on Boston Public Radio on Monday, warned that the increased rhetoric could have national security implications.
"I've covered the Middle East long enough to know we should not be trusting Iran, Iran is a bad actor in the world," Sennott said. "The U.S. had a deal, we broke it, and Iran is kind of throwing its hands up saying, 'Look, you're punishing us with sanctions and you broke the deal.' ... It's almost like goading."
Trump blamed the country for a mysterious incident involving oil tankers in the Persian Gulf earlier this month, despite evidence not being conclusive, and Sennott warned Americans to be skeptical of the conversation around that incident.
"After what we saw in lead up to war in Iraq, where we now know our country really did fabricate the threat of the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to lead into a war that was ill advised, we're really going back again to this idea that we're going to have questionable intelligence about actions by Iran to bring us into a war that is again ill advised," he said.
"[National Security Adviser John] Bolton and [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo haven't even pretended that they don't want to see regime change there. They openly talk about the need to be more aggressive with Iran," said Sennott. "What happens when the president is that irrational and that back and forth on these really big policies? The world feels unstable. We're going into the G20. ... We need more stability."
Sennott also heads up The GroundTruth Project .
