RUTHFULLY YOURS

On April 2, 1917, in a speech to Congress, President Wilson cited repeated German violations of the principle of “Freedom of the Seas” as casus belli, justifying America’s entry into the European blood-letting later known as World War I.

After that war was won, Wilson went on to promote the establishment of the League of Nations, an unconstitutional, ill-fated attempt to forge a collective global response to threats against world peace.

Zoom forward to last Thursday night, when a Romanian captain and a British security officer aboard the Mercer Street were killed in a drone attack in the Persian Gulf, off the shores of Oman. The Liberian-flagged tanker is operated by Zodiac, a company listed in Britain and owned by Eyal Offer, an Israeli billionaire.

An Iranian website initially reported the attack was retaliation for an Israeli air attack on Iranian targets in Syria, but officials in Iran later denied responsibility. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Israel possesses irrefutable evidence of Iran’s culpability.

Soon after, Secretary of State Blinken and Britain’s foreign minister, Dominic Raab, also stated Iran was responsible. These allies will launch a “collective response,” Mr. Blinken ominously declared Monday.

Yet before the collective concluded its deliberations over what course of coordinated action it should take collectively, Iran seemed to unilaterally escalate. Earlier today the British navy reported a “potential hijacking” of a ship off the United Arab Emirates’ coast. Additionally, four oil tankers reported loss of control over their Automatic Identification System tracker.

The Iranian news agency IRNA immediately denied Tehran was involved in those attacks, and the country even offered its assistance.

Israel’s foreign and defense ministers reportedly plan to brief diplomats of the United Nations Security Council tomorrow on the Mercer Street evidence. That indicates a Security Council response. Expect Russia, China and others to demand an investigation by the world body before any collective action is taken.

Meanwhile, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said Monday that Washington remains engaged in talks aimed at reviving the articles of appeasement on the nuclear deal. “Our view,” she said, “is that every single challenge and threat we face from Iran would be made more pronounced and dangerous by an unconstrained nuclear program.”

The 2015 nuclear deal, if revived, would replenish the Islamic Republic’s dwindling financial coffers. Yet the deal allows Iran to construct, by the end of the decade, as many nucular weapons it opts to mount on long range missiles, which, yet again according to the deal, it’s free to develop even now.

Tehran gets it. Iran-backed militias attack American bases in Iraq, as Tehran officials threaten escalation unless the last GI is removed from Iraq; a plan to hijack Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad from her Brooklyn home is narrowly averted; Iran’s uranium enrichment attains 60% while the mullahs bar international inspectors from visiting nuclear sites.

This is the context in which to regard Tehran’s threats to freedom of navigation on the high seas, the very act that precipitated American entry into WWI — and, ostensibly, the Vietnam War and, for that matter, the 1967 Six Days War.

Western militaries now reportedly contemplate a cyber attack on Iran’s infrastructure or an air destruction of the drone base responsible for the Mercer Street attack. Can they do so collectively?

Actions “against safety and freedom of navigation in the region are unacceptable,” the European Union declared. Yet, its statement added, “parties concerned should avoid any action that would be detrimental to regional peace and security.”

Meanwhile the EU dispatched Enrique Mora, its chief nuclear negotiator, to Tehran to attend Thursday’s inauguration of President Ebrahim Raisi, known to many Iranians as the Tehran Butcher.

Mr. Raisi is under American sanctions for his role in arresting and killing thousands of dissidents in 2008 and since. President Biden, who has claimed human rights would guide his foreign policy, is yet to reconsider participation in talks with a government headed by such a rights violator.

For now Washington’s “collective response” is widely expected to be just weak enough to accommodate a return to diplomacy — even as the Biden administration’s only real justification to renewing the 2015 deal seems to be that Donald Trump walked out on it.

Israel, meanwhile, expects a response would “make it clear to the Iranian regime that they have made a grave mistake,” Prime Minister Bennett said, adding however, “We, in any case, know how to convey the message to Iran in our own ways.”

Let’s hope that while America dithers, Israel remains self-assured in its “own ways.” As yet, Tehran — not to mention Beijing, Moscow, and other onlookers — is led to believe that the global response to its attacks on commercial ships will be some tough-worded “collective” statement.