America last: The real meaning of the Donald’s deplorable aggression against Iran (1)

In the present era of 24/7 "breaking news", the journalistic information intermediated by the internet and the cable networks has largely been reduced to noise, devoid of signal; or at least any historical context beyond the here and now.

These were the remarks of David Stockman a former two-term US Congressman from Michigan, in his article for the antiwar site, titled: “America Last: The Real Meaning of the Donald’s Deplorable Aggression Against Iran.”

The currently threatened escalation of the US’ economic war on Iran into an actual shooting war is a fraught case in point. Based on the news coverage since the two oil tankers were damaged one would think that Tehran decided out of the blue to attack the whole world via disrupting its 18 million barrel per day oil lifeline through the Straits of Hormuz.

The truth of the matter, however, is just the opposite. The blatant aggressor is Washington and the dangerous confrontation now unfolding is utterly unnecessary.

That’s the foundational reality, and it’s far more important to understand than the momentary disputation about whether the Japanese oil tanker got hit by a mine or incoming projectile of uncertain origin.

Indeed, the Bombzie Twins, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, have been in such heavy war heat for years that you can virtually bet when the dust settles the following false flags and manufactured pretexts for war per Max Blumenthal will have a Gulf of Oman coda: Remember the mysterious blowing up of the USS Maine in Havana harbor – for starting the war against Spain in 1898, Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 for war against Vietnam, Saddam’s supposed WMD’s, the alleged chemical attack on Syria’s Douma, burning aid on Colombia-Venezuela bridge…. and now attacks in the Gulf of Oman.

So whatever deliberate or accidental incident may next materialize in the Persian Gulf waters, the truth is that it will happen because: The US 5th Fleet naval and air war machine is all over the Persian Gulf and it shouldn’t even be there; and Washington has blatantly attacked Iran via crushing economic sanctions designed to close the entire global market to its oil exports and suffocate its domestic economy to the point of collapse – yet Iran is no threat to the security of the American homeland, and, for that matter, to Europe and Asia as well.

Indeed, Iran’s defense budget of less than $15 billion amounts to just 7 days of spending compared to the Pentagon’s $750 billion; and it is actually far less even in nominal terms than Iran’s military budget under the US-supported Shah way back in the late 1970’s. Iran’s military expenditure today is less than 25% of the level prior to the Revolution.

So military threat has absolutely nothing to do with it. Washington is knee deep in harms’ way and on the verge of starting a war with Iran solely on account of a misguided notion that the Persian Gulf is an American Lake that needs to be policed by the US Navy; and, more crucially, that Washington has the right to control Iran’s foreign policy and determine what alliances it may and may not have in the region – including whether or not they pass muster with Bibi Netanyahu.

Stated differently, the missions of protecting the oil supply lines and regulating the foreign policy of Iran is straight out of the playbook of Empire First. As such, it amounts to a foolish policy of putting America’s actual security last.

In the current instance admonition includes whether Iran chooses to ally with and provide aid to its Shiite Muslim brethren in Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah-Lebanon or the Ansarallah-led government of northern Yemen.

Every one of these entities are either sovereign governments or major political forces based on popular support, and have every right to invite the assistance of Tehran. To therefore describe them as ‘terrorist’ proxies for the Iranians is the height of Imperial arrogance.

As to the American Lake rationale, Washington obviously has that upside down. In a world unencumbered by Washington’s pretensions to Empire, Iran would be a beneficent helpmate to the global oil market and economy and the number# 1 source of production stability among the producers in the region.

That’s because unlike Saudi Arabia and the lesser Persian Gulf oil sheikhdoms which can afford to hoard their reserves, Iran is inherently motivated to produce every barrel of oil it can economically extract – given that its 80 million population needs the income.

During recent times it has produced about 4 million barrels per day – a figure that was sharply reduced during the Obama sanctions period of 2013-2015. But the recovery back to 4 million barrels per day after Iran implemented all of its commitments under the nuclear deal has again been reversed owing to the brutal sanctions imposed when Trump withdrew from that agreement entirely on the basis of regional politics, not violations of its terms.

Moreover, it is now about to get worse because most of the temporary exemptions from the oil embargo expired last month when Iran exported roughly 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd) and produced a total of 2.4 million bpd, with the balance going into domestic use.

It also happens that Iran has about 160 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, which puts it right behind Canada (170 billion barrels), Saudi Arabia (266 billion barrels) and Venezuela (300 billion barrels of mostly heavy oil) in the global league tables.

That’s relevant because in a world free of Washington’s hegemonic impositions, global capital would flow to Iran’s oilfields massively. It therefore has the potential to take production from its ample and drastically underdeveloped reserves to 6 million bpd or even 8 million bpd with sufficient investment and world-class technology.

So even if you accept protection and stabilization of oil production in the Persian Gulf as a legitimate aim of policy, which it is not, Washington’s economic war on Iran is pointless. In the great geo-political/economic scheme of things, Iran is the natural force for maximum production owing to the aspirations of its very large and reasonably well-educated population.

The GDP per capita of Iran is about $5,500 compared to $21,500 per capita in Saudi Arabia. Were Iran to achieve per capita income parity, it would need a GDP of $1.7 trillion, not $450 billion, and that would take a pretty hefty oil and energy investment boom and full throttle production to bring about.

What we are saying is that there is not really need for a policeman in the Persian Gulf in the first place. If Iran were not threatened by Washington it would produce all it could and would have no reason whatsoever to interfere with commerce and shipping through the Straits of Hormuz.

But none of the Persian Gulf states can afford to disrupt production for political or military purposes, either. That is to say, without abundant oil revenues to placate their powerless but large populations (50 million people in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait are ruled and plundered by a few princes and their armies of retainers), the royals would all be living in Switzerland, anyway.

At the end of the day, the whole misbegotten notion that oil security in the Persian Gulf requires the presence of the Bahrain-based US 5th Fleet – a left over canard from the Cold War that ended 29 years ago. The 1970s theory of Henry Kissinger and his team of hegemons was that the dying Soviet Union was on the verge of pushing into the Persian Gulf from the north.

Needless to say, it never had the military capacity or economic resources to accomplish that feat, and the now open Soviet archives show that there wasn’t even a paper plan to do so.

So at the root of today’s total unnecessary military clash in the Persian Gulf is the long-standing Washington error that America’s security and economic well-being depends upon keeping an armada there in order to protect the surrounding oilfields and the flow of tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.

That doctrine has been wrong from the day it was officially enunciated by one of America’s great economic ignoramuses, Henry Kissinger, at the time of the original oil crisis in 1973. The 46 years since then have proven in spades that it doesn’t matter who controls the oilfields, and that the only effective cure for high oil prices is the free market.

Every tin pot dictatorship – from Libya’s Muammar Qadhafi to Iraq’s Saddam, and to the bloody-minded chieftains of Nigeria – has produced oil. And usually all the oil they could because almost always they desperately needed the revenue.

For crying out loud, even the barbaric thugs of Daesh milked every possible drop of petroleum from the tiny, wheezing oilfields scattered around their backwater domain before they were finally driven out. So there is no economic case whatsoever for Imperial Washington’s massive military presence in West Asia or for talking sides among the local powers.

The truth is, there is no such thing as an OPEC cartel – virtually every member produces all they can and cheats whenever possible. The only thing that resembles production control in the global oil market is the fact that the Saudi princes treat their oil reserves not much differently than Exxon.

That is, they attempt to maximize the present value of their 270 billion barrels of reserves. Yet ultimately they are no more clairvoyant at calibrating the best oil price to accomplish that objective at any given time than are the economists employed by Exxon, the DOE or the International Energy Agency.

For instance, during the run-up to the late 2014 collapse of the world oil price, the Saudis overestimated the staying power of China’s temporarily surging call on global supply.

At the same time, they badly underestimated how rapidly and extensively the $100 per barrel marker reached in early 2008 would trigger a flow of investment, technology and cheap debt into alternative sources of supply. That is, the US shale patch, the Canadian tar sands, the tired petroleum provinces of Russia, the deep offshore of Brazil etc. – to say nothing of solar, wind and all the other government subsidized alternative source of BTUs.

Way back when Jimmy Carter was telling us to turn down the thermostats and put on our cardigan sweaters, those of us on the free market side of the so-called energy shortage debate said high oil prices are their own best cure. Now we know for sure.

To wit, the Fifth Fleet and its overt and covert auxiliaries should never have been in the Persian Gulf and its environs. And we mean from the very beginning – going all the way back to the CIA’s coup against Iran’s democratically-elected in 1953 that was aimed at protecting the oilfields from nationalization.

But having turned Iran into an enemy, Imperial Washington was just getting started, When 1990 rolled around the American Lake theory got a new lease on life – one that carries down to the stupidity of Washington’s military presence there to this very day.

Once again in the name of “oil security” it plunged the American war machine into the politics and religious fissures of the Persian Gulf; and did so on account of a local small beans conflict between Iraq and Kuwait that had no bearing whatsoever on the safety and security of American citizens.

That was the first part of the article titled; America Last:” The Real Meaning of the Donald’s Deplorable Aggression Against Iran.”