Iran's regional rivals, Saudi Arabia and UAE have been staunch proponents of a US attack on Iran and they stand to gain enormously if such an attack happens: a major oil supplier gets removed, increasing demand for their oil; the war increases the price of oil; their only serious rival in the region gets destroyed; and to top it all, it will be at no cost to them—US will pay for the war with money, lives, and reputation and they stand to gain all the benefits.
It would be very convenient if Iran does something to legitimize, even force US to destroy the country to rubble, wouldn't it?
> Enough people inside government would be horrified that it would 100% leak immediately if not beforehand.
Saudi Arabia does not have the same limitation. If they could orchestrate and get away with Khashoggi murder in another country, a tanker attack in their backyard is a piece of cake for them.
They totally didn't get away with it though. They were incompetent, bungled it and totally got caught. Faking an Iranian mine attack, including getting an Iranian navy vehicle filmed at the scene is orders of magnitude more complex and difficult. No way a gulf state could do it. US could do it, but couldn't keep the secret.
You can say many things about IRGC but they are not incompetent.
The only possible actors are..(without taking video into account). Iran, Israel(incredibly unlikely but they could do it and keep it secret for a while), Houthis(same thing as Iran really).
US is just incapable of an operation like this and keeping it secret.
If not Iran, why is there video of an Iranian navy vessel pulled up alongside the attacked tanker?