The dogs of Empire are howling for Iranian blood. Iran has dropped the petrodollar - banned the dollar from its markets entirely! - and it must be punished, lest other countries follow its example and start thinking they control their own economies. The US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, frustrated by their failure to take out Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, another petrodollar apostate, have shifted their sights to the next country on their checklist for remaking the Middle East in the image of Greater Israel.
As President Donald Trump prepares to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) despite Iran’s compliance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a theatrical press conference last night, outlining Iran’s “secret nuclear program” and beating the drums for war against the Islamic Republic. Netanyahu’s report, based on 100,000 files stolen from Tehran by the Israeli Mossad, contains no new information, nor does it offer proof Iran is currently violating the nuclear agreement; instead, it fixates on Project Amad, a “secret program” already known to the IAEA which Netanyahu admits was shelved in 2003 but which he claims was merely placed on hold to be resurrected when the West least expects it. “Why would a terrorist regime hide and meticulously catalog its secret nuclear files if not to use them at a later date?” he asks, perhaps unaware that by pushing the US to scrap the deal, he is opening the door to Iran resuming development of nuclear weapons, at which point those “secret nuclear files” will come in handy. The performance served a clear propaganda purpose for Trump, who cited it as proof that he was correct in seeking to withdraw from the deal over the protests of other JCPOA signatories, including France, UK, Russia, China, and Germany.
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who has said there are no innocent people in Gaza, is fully on board with ramping up Iranian hostilities, explaining that Israel has three problems: “Iran, Iran and Iran.” UN Secretary Nikki Haley, who never met a country she didn’t want to bomb, admitted last month that the US would maintain a military presence in Syria against Assad’s wishes in order to “watch” Iran “because Iran is a national threat to American interests." John Bolton, Trump’s new national security advisor, is so bloodthirsty he gives even CNN pause. His enthusiasm for preemptively bombing Iran makes Haley look timid. He is affiliated with Mujahedin E Khalq, an Iranian terrorist cult that Mossad has used to leak fake documents intended to frame the regime as a nuclear threat. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, parroting the treasured neocon lie that Iran is the world’s top sponsor of terrorism, cozied up to Saudi Arabia (the actual top sponsor of terrorism) during his first official state visit, chiding Iran for “destabilizing the region” - an accusation that would be hilarious if he didn’t wield so much power. Pompeo was known during his time as CIA head for discussing the Rapture with co-workers. Trump couldn't ask for a more Strangelovian crew.
In March, Iran banned the use of the dollar in foreign trade, effectively signing its own death warrant, if history is any guide. Libya didn’t survive this move; neither did Iraq. Syria hangs on by the skin of its teeth after dropping the dollar in 2006 but seems to have scored a temporary reprieve from the fate of its neighbors now that Russia has stepped in. Putin's interference has caused no end of anguish to the neocons, who see Assad's continued existence as a finger in the eye of their economic hegemony, but so far they are unwilling to risk a direct confrontation with Russian forces.
Iran has been distancing itself from the petrodollar for years in the face of ongoing US hostility. In May 2017, the country signed an agreement with Russia to barter oil for goods, circumventing US sanctions on both countries. When Trump banned Iranian immigrants from entering the US last January, the country dropped the dollar as the official currency used in financial and foreign exchange reports. Following that move, Congress introduced a bill authorizing the use of military force in Iran. While it has not yet passed, the resolution “authorizes the President to use the US Armed Forces as necessary in order to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.” What a coincidence, then, that Netanyahu’s PowerPoint posits just that eventuality.
In 2008, Iran launched its International Oil Bourse, an exchange for trading oil, gas and petroleum products in non-dollar currencies, sparking another round of US sanctions. Far from impeding trade, however, the sanctions encouraged Iran's trade partners to work around the petrodollar, accelerating a global drift away from the imperial currency. In 2016, Iran switched to rupees in conducting oil trades with India. Earlier this year, China launched the petroyuan, an oil-futures contract denominated in the Chinese currency and a potentially serious threat to dollar hegemony now that China is the world’s largest oil importer. Russia, like Iran a victim of harsh US sanctions, has been quick to jump on board with the petroyuan, signing on to a payment system that allows the two countries to trade directly in their own currencies without dollar intermediaries. The imposition of further sanctions on Iran under Trump may accelerate the decline in relevance of the petrodollar as Iran, the third-largest oil producer, is pushed into China’s arms.
The official narratives employed to sell petrodollar wars to the American people vary, but their core remains constant. Any nation with the hubris to believe it controls its own economy - that it can sell its own oil in whatever currency it pleases, to whomever it pleases - must be punished, lest others follow its example and the petrodollar collapse like the house of cards it is. Offending nations are always disarmed first, because there’s nothing the Empire hates more than a fair fight. Saddam Hussein destroyed his weapons stockpiles after the first Gulf War, yet the ghosts of these weapons were used as casus belli for a second Iraq invasion. Muammar Gaddafi liquidated his arsenal as part of diplomatic rapprochement with the US and UK in the years before he himself was brutally liquidated. NATO forces didn’t even try to come up with a good reason for the disaster in Libya, citing concerns about the regime attacking civilians only to slaughter hundreds more civilians itself. Syria destroyed its chemical weapons four years ago; it has only recently been pulled back from the brink of oblivion through Russian intervention after nearly a decade fighting rebels backed by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Like Hussein, Assad continues to be accused of harboring more weapons. On the brink of defeat, Syrian rebels staged a chemical attack last month and blamed the regime, provoking hasty response strikes from Israel, US, UK, and France before OPCW inspectors could arrive on the scene and confirm that no chemical attack had in fact taken place.
Israel killed 26 soldiers, mostly Iranians, with a missile strike on the Brigade 47 base in Syria yesterday; the base, located in Hama, is one of the largest Iranian-linked sites in the country. The unprovoked strike suggests the Netanyahu regime has tired of complaining to the US and Russia about the Iranian presence in Syria and decided to take matters into its own hands. Bibi’s blustering press conference also distracts from Israeli Defense Forces’ flagrantly illegal slaughter of unarmed protesters and journalists in Gaza during the Palestinian March of Return. Even in a nation that routinely flouts international law, the scale of the violence that has left dozens dead and over a thousand wounded during the last few weeks has broken through the usual media blackout on Israeli war crimes and horrified the global community. Haley continues to veto UN resolutions against the IDF violence, but even prominent Jewish American celebrities like Natalie Portman are beginning to publicly distance themselves from Netanyahu's government.
Netanyahu has been crying wolf about Iranian nukes for over 25 years. In 1995, he claimed Iran was three to five years away from developing a nuclear bomb, an alarm he continues to sound every few years. Though most apocalyptic preachers who repeatedly predict the end of the world only to watch the dates pass without incident are laughed out of town, Netanyahu has escaped this fate, perhaps because he sits on his own uncatalogued stockpile of hundreds of nukes and bathes in US taxpayer dollars to the tune of $10.1 million in military aid every day. He has previously helped lie the US into war, warning the Bush regime in 2002 that there was “no question whatsoever” that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons. It doesn't take much critical insight to recognize the Israeli Prime Minister is a pathological liar.
Iran has complied with the JCPOA since its inception in 2015, meaning Trump has no legitimate cause to withdraw the US from the treaty. Netanyahu's theatrics provide the flimsy rhetorical cover Trump will need should he decide, as he almost certainly will, to back out of the deal against the wishes of the other parties. Pompeo promised the US would "stand with Israel against Iran" - even though Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani threatened to restart the country's nuclear program only if Trump canned the deal. Cause and effect work differently in the realms of Empire, apparently, but just like last month's standoff following the Douma "attack," this conflict has the potential to ignite World War 3. The US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia were all but defeated in Syria, and Saudi Arabia is also losing its proxy war in Yemen. Far from cautious even in the best of times, the allies may behave even more recklessly, and with Russian forces still on the ground in Syria, things could escalate quickly.
Iran has found itself in US crosshairs before. Last year, a wave of economic protests were hailed as the latest and greatest color revolution in the Arab Spring, but try as they might, US operatives were unable to convince the protesters the solution to their problems lay in overthrowing the Rouhani regime. A similar plan unfolded during the 2009 election, when opposition candidate Mousavi emerged as the figurehead of the so-called Green Revolution yet failed to unseat President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran was famously part of Bush’s iconic/moronic Axis of Evil with Iraq and North Korea, though Bush had already overextended the military in Afghanistan and Iraq by the time he could have launched an Iranian invasion, much to Bolton's chagrin. Netanyahu’s involvement, however, suggests that this round of Iranian sabre-rattling is more serious. Bibi doesn’t put on a performance like last night's conference - which memorably featured a slide reading in huge letters "IRAN LIED" - for nothing. The Empire is spoiling for a fight after losing in Syria, and Iran is about to feel the wrath of a nuclear-armed lunatic helming a government whose stated policy in the face of certain defeat is nuclear holocaust.
“I’m sure he’ll do the right thing. The right thing for the US, the right thing for Israel, and the right thing for the peace of the world," Netanyahu said in a pointed hint to Trump and his pack of rabid dogs. Too bad those three "right things" are mutually exclusive.