A Cycle of Escalation: Why We Keep Expecting More from This War The latest exchange between the US and Iran, where American forces destroyed three Iranian oil tankers in retaliation for a missile attack on warships, is just another chapter in a long running saga.
The incident itself is hardly surprising – we've seen this pattern play out before, with each side escalating tensions until someone blinks or something catastrophic happens. CENTCOM commander Adm.
Brad Cooper's promise to "impose an even higher economic cost" on Iran has all the gravitas of a threat from a teenager in a video game.