Capitalism´s future and Iran
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Useful piece on Iran. Paints a rather grim picture of what we might expect in the future. But as usual with these kinds of commentaries, there is little or no attempt to understand war in the context of capitalism´s commercial rivalries. It’s all the fault of “incompetent” or crazed politicians. Well, no, it’s not only the politicians who are to blame, actually….
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Iranian drones have hit Kuwait’s largest oil refinery for the second day. Multiple fires broke out at the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery, which processes about 730,000 barrels of oil per day, early this morning.
Watchers of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine will note how drones have fundamentally changed the nature of modern warfare, taking exactly the kind of asymmetric fighting that Iran is engaged in to a new level.
The days of huge aircraft carriers and columns of tanks controlling the battlefield are over; drones make key targets vulnerable in ways never previously foreseen.
It is the mesh of Ukrainian surveillance and attack drones that has greatly slowed Russia’s advance into Ukraine; all of NATO’s wonder weapons of tanks, missiles and APC’s have flopped and all for the same reason – Russian drones found them, and then Russian artillery destroyed them.
Iranian drones have laid waste to US radar installations in the Gulf, a few $50,000 drones to remove a vital strategic advantage that cost the US billions of dollars to build. They will most likely never be replaced, not least because their own destruction provides ample evidence of their ineffectiveness against the very threat they were supposed to be guarding against.
I am not the only observer of the frontlines in Ukraine to notice a relative dearth of Russian drones over the last 4-6 weeks. This is odd because Russia manufactures more than Ukraine. Where have all the drones or parts for drones gone? Perhaps we already know, and Iran has been stocked with enough drones and parts to keep drone attacks going for a very long time.
Even if the IRGC were to lose control of Tehran (which now looks unlikely), Iran is such a physically huge nation that units with drones could operate for years, keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed, slowly degrading the energy infrastructure of Gulf nations and indeed attacking the desalination plants that keep Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia alive.
At any time, Iran could destroy the over 400 desalination plants that are in the Persian Gulf, thus rendering large parts of the region uninhabitable and triggering a humanitarian catastrophe that would see more than a hundred million refugees on the move.
The entire Persian Gulf being pitched into civilisational collapse would suit Israel just fine and would be seen as a fulfilment of Zionist interpretations of end times theology both in Israel and in the US. This is precisely why the unholy alliance between Jewish Zionism, US-based Christian Zionism and the New Apostolic Reformation is so incredibly dangerous.
Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas field, precisely because they want to trigger an apocalyptic response from Iran, one that would either deliver a ravaged Middle East into their hands and provide the ‘justification’ for the launch of Israeli nuclear weapons against Iran. Shocked by that? Think it is hyperbolic or alarmist? Never bet against the cynicism and sadism of Israel – they will have war-gamed this scenario many times.
The confused response of the White House saw them implausibly denying that they knew of or approved of Israel’s attack on Iran’s gas infrastructure. This illuminates the ongoing war within Trump’s government between pragmatists, military video game fantasists and religious fanatics. Who is really in charge of Trump’s coterie of buffoons and lunatics? It would seem at best unclear.
While Trump and elements of his administration clearly desperately want to exit the war they started, they have lost control of events and dropping more bombs on the situation solves nothing. Is it even clear that the IRGC can retain command and control over its forces while every day Israel assassinates its commanders?
Trump himself is clearly mentally unhinged, the White House is in abject chaos and infested with people actively seeking Armageddon. In Iran, a militarised government, purposely decentralised so as to resist exactly the kind of attack they are now facing, retains enough conventional firepower to devastate the energy infrastructure and water supplies of the entire Persian Gulf. Israel is run by genocidaires with no regard for morals, law or indeed human life. All sides retain dreadful destructive capacities, but who retains control or restraint? Anyone?
“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!”
Is the havoc about to end (as the oil markets clearly believe) or will the end times soon be upon us? Either way, the situation in Iran is every bit as dangerous as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and people grumbling about the cost of petrol at the pumps would be better served by trying to bring their respective governments to their senses.
If there is to be an end to the spirals of escalation and consequence in the Middle East, then it will be the US and Trump that will have to “cry uncle” and walk away – not Iran.
Are there enough people left in Washington capable of seeing and averting this gathering apocalypse? I honestly doubt it, but I pray that I am wrong.
Are we still saying this is unlikely (both Iran and Ukraine cases) to become a third world war?
I suppose it depends on what you mean by a world war. The world has always been at war ever since the last “war to end all wars”. At the moment there are roughly 30–35 active wars and over 50 additional armed conflicts/insurgencies
I think a tighter definition of a world war would be an open, direct and declared war between the major powers or superpowers – notably, the US on the one hand, as the world´s powerful military and Russia/China and would involve dragging in their respective allies.
I don’t think a world war in this sense is imminent. Probably, the Ukraine war will end quite soon when Russia has taken the whole of Donbas (there is still a bit left to do) and possibly also Odesa. Ironically, the Middle East conflict might accelerate this by diminishing military support for Ukraine
There is also China, but the latest US intelligence reports suggest China is not really interested in a military invasion of Taiwan. Even if that happened, I doubt if the US would step in to support Taiwan. Nor after what has just happened in Iran
This is quite an interesting take on the war by Craig Murray
The attack on Iran was always planned by Trump. He was not “bounced into it” by Israel. It had been in gestation for months. That fact had been held within a very tight circle to avoid both political opposition and institutional opposition from the US military and intelligence community.
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Trump’s naval blockade of Venezuela’s oil has secured a US monopoly of its sale and distribution. As with Iraq, only US-approved contractors can buy the oil and payments are made to a Trump-controlled account in Qatar, from which revenue is given to the Venezuelan government entirely at Trump’s discretion.This audacious imperialist grab of the world’s largest oil reserve further insulated the USA against the effects of the forthcoming closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Again, the narrative is being spun that Trump did not foresee the closure of the Strait by Iran. That is plainly a nonsense – every commentary on a potential Iran war for half a century has focused on the Strait of Hormuz. The only possible explanation is that Trump does not mind the closure.
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Trump’s thrashing about to articulate objectives for the war in Iran is performative, a blind to cover his true and steadfast objective – simply the annihilation of Iran as a functioning state, the infliction of the maximum amount of death and infrastructural damage, the reduction of Iran to the condition of Libya.
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Destruction of Iran on the scale envisaged will take years of hard pounding. Again, it is planned – you don’t ask Congress for an instalment of $200 billion for a war you plan to wrap up in a month. Again, Trump’s taunts about having already won, objectives being achieved and about possibly finishing soon, are all just smoke and mirrors. The scale and horror of what is planned for Iran has to be obfuscated to limit a public revulsion that would be echoed in parts of the state apparatus.Netanyahu yesterday revealed an interesting part of the endgame – construction of an oil pipeline that brings Iran’s oil out to be shipped from a Mediterranean terminal in Israel. That is a breathtakingly audacious plan, but absolutely aligns with Netanyahu’s and Trump’s actions.
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