“We’re engaging now with a number of countries to see if we can put together a coalition that would ensure freedom of navigation both in the Straits of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab,” Dunford was quoted by Reuters as saying.

“And, so I think probably over the next couple of weeks we’ll identify which nations have the political will to support that initiative and then we’ll work directly with the militaries to identify the specific capabilities that’ll support that,” he added.

Earlier, US Fifth Fleet Commander Vice Admiral Jim Malloy said the Navy would not rule out sending the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group through the Strait of Hormuz if doing so was found to be necessary. The strait is a strategic narrow body of water separating the Persian Gulf from the Arabian Sea.

The sharp escalation of tensions between Iran and the United States began in May 2018, when US President Donald Trump announced Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Last month, a year after Trump’s announcement, Iran said the country would suspend some of their voluntary commitments under the nuclear deal, citing the other signatories’ apparent inability to withstand US pressure.

According to many international thinkers, creating tensions in the Persian Gulf region by the US is also aimed at containing other countries’ access to the energy resources of the region, especially that of China, which is in a trade war with the US.

Many experts believe that the US’ withdrawal from Iran’s nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, under false pretexts not only aims at pressurizing Iran but also it is a way to pressurize China to compromise in the trade war that Washington has waged against it. Any conflict and tension in the Persian Gulf region which , EU, Japan, India and China’s economies are heavily dependent on means a great blow to the countrys’ economies, therefore many suspicious incidents and tensions created by Washington and its proxies in Persian Gulf region like attacking oil tankers can be interpreted as the White House’s measures to contain its global economic rivals in order to guarantee the US hegemony and influence for the next decades.

This is not new! To contain its rivals, the US has resorted to many strategies and tactics such as destabilizing west borders of China in Afghanistan and Pakistan and trying to spread terrorism and instability to central Asia aiming at thwarting Chinese ‘One road-One belt’ initiative, destabilizing Middle East and backing rightist groups in Europe, creating tensions in Venezuela and east of Europe.