No. Flat out no.
If they want to hurt the US--largely self-sufficient for petroleum and methane, why punish other countries.
Yes, they focus on some countries. Some have safe-passage agreements for ships (hard to say if they hold true, given lack of transponder activation). But it's not just "against the US." So your generalization fails.
Who's hit? "Bad" Muslims on the "wrong side". Jews/Israel (no diff in most Islamist rhetoric, Shi'ite or Sunni).
You know Bush2's "you're with us or against us" and the hate/ridicule it got here? It's baa-aa--aa-ck!
Qatar seriously helped, with Iran, Hamas? Oops, not this time. Let's kill civilians and hurt civilian infrastracture. Allah ... hu akbar!
Some pundit , going from village to village/outlet to outlet, said obviously the "umma" meant no Muslim would attack a Muslim. Umm ... yeah. I guess. Because that was a cray-cray claim.
S'what? Pakistan/Afghanistan? Iran/Iraq? Yemen civil war?
So Iran v UAE, Iran v SA, Houthi v SA, Iran v Dubai? They can't happen? Ever?
No, wait. Could it be the old Shi'ite v Sunni divide? Mo, no! Can't be. But ... Wait. That was the aftermath of the Iraq war. And the basis for ISIS v Assad. Yet a respected itinerant Hindu 'scholar' said otherwise? And we wanted it to be so?
Saw a nice graph today. NPR said day after day that Iran was "escalating" attacks. Missiles, drones, deaths. More destruction today than yesterday! More yesterday than two, then 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ...days ago! Oh. Noes!
The nice bar chart was by country. For each country, after over two weeks of 'escalation' the attacks were < 10% of day two's attacks.
The "escalation" may have been by target--"on day 10 they took out 10 missile defense sites, on day 22 part of a refinery!"--but that's a very squishy definition, devised minute by minute, of 'escalation'. I'd say that on day 22 they had reduced efficacy. Sharply reduced. Because they're going after easier, non-military, meaning civilian targets. As Iran becomes more Putinesque, well, they improve their stature?
Surely not.
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