Iran tensions
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Payment in dollars does in effect impact on trade, trading in dollars makes purchase of US goods easier for oil rich countries trying to spend their cash. Also many Sovereign Wealth Funds are happy to invest their funds in US government bonds, which keeps interest rates on US bonds at lower rates. US debt is now at about $33 trillion, if that was to cost them even 0.1% more in interest, that’s a lot of money.
“…A weaker dollar could help U.S. businesses compete globally by making exports less expensive, boosting the economy and potentially helping Trump’s bid for re-election in 2020. But a currency intervention could spark pushback from other countries, jeopardize the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency and touch off market turmoil…”
In June the U.S. military began moving equipment and hundreds of troops back to a military base in Saudi Arabia that the U.S. deserted more than 15 years ago, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the deployment.
Over the coming weeks the deployment to Prince Sultan Air Base, intended to counter the threat from Iran, will grow to include fighter jets and Patriot long-range missile defense systems, the officials said. The Patriots have already arrived at the base and should be operational in mid-July, while the aircraft are expected to arrive in August.
Several hundred U.S. service members are already on site preparing the facility south of Riyadh.
And those are the anti-globalists ? They can fool the fools
There was an article in last Wednesday’s Times which neatly illustrated that the ruling class is well aware that wars are not fought over ideologies or for humanitarian reasons but over material reasons such as sources of raw materials, markets, investment outlets and trade routes, as socialists have always said.
Headed “In the next war, we’ll need the Royal Marines. Other nations are scaling up for an amphibious conflict over trade but Britain is ill-prepared“, the author (Roger Boyes) argued that British capitalism would need marines to protect trade routes, e not just the Hormuz strait in the Persian Gulf “through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes”, but also the Bab el-Mandeh strait linking the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and the Malaccan straits “through which 80 per cent of China’s oil passes from the Indian Ocean”.
And of course Gibraltar, a convenient place from which to seize Iranian tankers without taking into consideration that two can play at that game, as the seizure of a UK tanker passing through the Hormuz strait shows. The UK, which is playing in the same League as Iran despite its imperial(ist) pretensions, is in a weak position here as more UK and other tankers pass through Hormuz strait than Iranian ones through the straits of Gibraltar. They are going to have to back down unless they want to provoke a war in the Persian Gulf which not even Trump wants.
War against Iran is already taking place and Israel openly admits it.
“Israel is the only country in the world that has been killing Iranians for two years,” Israel’s Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi said on Sunday in an interview with the Israeli radio station Kan Bet. “We strike the Iranians hundreds of times in Syria…”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/iranians-years-syria-israeli-minister-190721151553949.html
Netanyahu also spoke along the same lines last week during an interaction with the cadets of the National Security College.
“At the moment, the only army in the world to fight Iran is the Israeli army,” he said.Having been initially reticent hoping for a EU alliance but finding little enthusiasm, the UK now joins the US in “policing” the Persian Gulf, even though the US has a much wider remit i.e. to enforce its unilateral sanctions on Iran than the UK.
The New York Times bias
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/08/10/new-york-times-pro-war-arguments-against-war-iran
“…Wars don’t spontaneously combust, nor do the “risks of conflict . . . grow sharply” on their own…These editorials make it sound as if the US and Iran have been brought to the edge of war by immutable physical laws, rather than by conscious decisions the US ruling class has made. Framing the issue this way hides US government responsibility for the increased possibility of war….”
A war with Iran would be worst than Vietnam In Venezuela they would be forced to go in the jungle and the mountains
At the time the Spanish said that the interception of the oil tanker was at the bequest of the Americans. something the UK denied.
Now, the Americans are demanding that the UK continue to detain the oil tanker in Gibraltar thwarting any diplomatic deal between the UK and Iran over the release of the UK tanker in Iran.
There won’t be a war of the US with Britain in tow against Iran. Iran doesn’t need nuclear weapons. Its ‘nuclear option’ is to close the straits of Hormuz, through which 20% of oil passes. Even a hawk like Bolton is not going to risk that and Trump will probably prefer a top level meeting with the chief Ayatollah if his diplomatic record is anything to go by.
Prof. Mirandi from one of Iran’s universities said the other day words to the effect that they’ll know if the US is planning a war on Iran if/when the US pull out their troops from surrounding areas because they know they would be targets of Iran if they were to stay. Makes sense.
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