What to make of the President (sigh) and his decision to abruptly withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action better known as the Iran nuclear deal? The obvious reason, and frankly, not to be taken too lightly for a “leader” whose views of the world appear to be shaped solely by comic books and their cable news equivalent on Fox, is that he wanted to just un-do everything Barack Obama did, because, well, Trump is like that. A narrow-minded racist asshole. All true, but…
Of course, there is the simple geo-political reality that there is an Israel/Saudi axis of power developing in the Middle East whose principal interest seems to be checking Iranian power, damn all other interests (such as millions of displaced and injured and hundreds of thousands killed in Yemen, Syria and perhaps points beyond), with the United States supporting that axis, Russia supporting Syria, with Iran also notionally supporting Syria and opposing Saudi Arabia (at least sixteen different powers have apparently bombed Syria since that shit show started.) And of course, Yemen and Syrian refugees are subject to the Trump travel ban (duly blessed by the U.S. Supreme Court). This appears to be the ultimate proxy war situation as the great powers (China is notionally on the side of Syria and Iran, though very quietly, with the European powers such as Britain and France notionally on the American/Israeli/Saudi side with NATO member Turkey seemingly on its own side) maneuver in the Middle East theater (with the slaughter of the locals a secondary concern).
But then there is this out of the box analysis that suggests that the United States scotched the Iran deal for brazen financial reasons. Simply put, the dollar is essentially close to its death throes, and the prospect of between $100 billion and $200 billion in Iranian dollar assets frozen in the United States under longstanding sanctions being suddenly (or even gradually) returned to Iran as the nuclear deal goes on and then dumped into the financial markets at the very moment that a variety of sources were putting upward pressure on oil prices would throw the American economy into chaos.
We’re over 25 years past the publication of Francis Fukuyama’s “the End of History,” which was a little bit premature, because history kept right on, as Karl Marx, who recently celebrated his 200th birthday (or would have if he weren’t dead) said “History repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce.” Or something. And if, ahem, “President Donald Trump” is not the definition of farce, I clearly got nothing.
What the “all of the above” amount to are variations on good old resource wars; even though Yemen and Syria probably have less oil than anyone else in the Middle East except maybe Israel, they are in the way of other places that have oil and gas and might want, you know, pipelines or ports or shipping lanes to get the hell out of their way and let them make money. And of course, Russia, thought to have the world’s largest oil and gas reserves, if still largely unexploited, would rather those pipelines not be built. And the USA needs Saudi oil as a stabilizer. And Iran is an all around pain the ass, with a whole lot of oil in its own right. And… You get the idea.
Which is why this whole thing is such a (literally) bloody freaking mess. Where does it end? Somehow, human kindness has to step up, somewhere. I don’t know where; it seems the comically stupid and cruel Donald Trump, the competently authoritarian Vladimir Putin, the genocidally brutal Bashar al-Assad, the pathologically tenacious Bibi Netanyahu, the cunningly vicious crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, and the nasty Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei, are not exactly going to be the best examplars for human niceness. So I’m afraid it’s going to have to come from the rest of us, in whatever small or not so small ways we can, to try to help our fellow humans.
It’s all I got. Because we are perilously close to something much bigger and nastier than the multiple conflicts that have already killed hundreds of thousands and caused the biggest refugee crisis since World War II.
tdog
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