| There is evidence – plenty of evidence – that the leadership of Iran have swallowed whole the sales pitch of the Nuclear Power marketing men. They have not diverted from their openly stated aim – to establish a civilian nuclear power capability, to aid in the economic development of a nation with a very low standard of living.
By contrast, there is no evidence, despite the propaganda spin based on the IAEA site inspection reports, that Iran has taken any steps to develop a nuclear weapons capability. | |
| Given the strongly voiced antipathy of the world at large to even just the concept of Iran having atomic weapons, why would Iran ever consider building any ? It just doesn’t make any sense. Iran’s constant public demands to be permitted to develop nuclear-powered electricity generation – despite widespread accusations that their nuclear programme is a cover for building nuclear warheads – just goes to show they mean what they say.
Iran is not interested in atomic weaponry, and yet the Americans continue to accuse them of going down that path. Why do the Americans continue to accuse Iran of progressing towards the production of weapons grade fissile material ? Behind the scenes, lurking in the shadows, there are several key players – including Saudi Arabia – and there are several important playgrounds – including Iraq and Iran. Saudi Arabia, as we all should know from our schoolroom textbooks, is the sandy kingdom of petroleum oil, with a the ruling class rich beyond anybody’s wildest dreams. The United States of America is economically tied to Saudi Arabia. The USA has a habit of offering things other than money in exchange for imported goods and commodities. It exchanges massive containers of imported Chinese goods for reserve currency dollars that they know will never get spent. It makes private companies operating in Africa wealthy in order to import commodities at rock bottom prices through its “markets”. In exchange for clement trading conditions with Saudi Arabia, the USA exchanges investment in American private corporations. Saudi Arabia effectively owns trillions of dollars of American real estate and corporate infrastructure. Saudi interests are therefore American interests, by definition. Saudi Arabia also faces a huge problem – oil depletion. Yet, under the rocks of nearby Iraq and Iran, lie a significant proportion of the world’s untapped petroleum oil and Natural Gas.
Kjell Aleklett and his colleagues at the University of Uppsala are researching this :- https://www4.tsl.uu.se/~aleklett/ppt/20090305_aleklett_aberdeen.pdf https://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2012/jan/17/guardian-weekly-letters-20-january “The Iranian navy has warned it could close the strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes (Iran: “We’ll close the strait of Hormuz”, 13 January). This would not be good for anyone, least of all the Iranians, but it may help us to prepare for what is to come as global oil supplies begin to decline, perhaps as early as 2015…The international president for the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, Kjell Aleklett, once suggested that nations adopt an oil depletion protocol so that remaining supplies are shared out rationally. The alternative is hardly pleasant. There are many precedents for countries going to war over diminishing resources. Until we develop alternatives, if indeed there are any, oil remains a critical resource.”, Jenny Goldie, Michelago, NSW, Australia The Assault on Iraq in 2003, a kind of bizarre one-sided war of aggression, seemed to have no logical basis, and the world is now recognising it didn’t have a legal standing either. What it did do was destroy the nation’s stability, wreck its infrastructure, impoverish the people, and make it easy for the world’s large oil and gas companies to set up shop – exporting Iraq’s precious hydrocarbon reserves to the world at rock-bottom prices. Can it be that somebody, or somebodies, maybe Saudi Arabian somebodies, want to cut a deal over Iran ? That various parties want Team America, the World Police, to blast and shoot their way into Iran, so that they can take part in the looting of Iranian energy resources ? I think, under that scenario, that Iran is quite within its rights to say thus far, no farther. I’m not surprised that they have claimed they can close the Strait of Hormuz. Until the contingency pipelines have been built over the desert, that one waterway is the way that something like 40% of the world’s hydrocarbon fuels are taken to market. | |
Categories
One reply on “War Gaming Iran (2)”
Hi Jo
Good for you to keep writing of the lies being used to set Iran up for attack.
The powers that be think we all will get bored if they proceed slowly enough, and they may be right about most people. They have been playing this game for a long time and so know how to defuse opposition , either by lies or in this case the boredom and self-absorption of the majority of the affluent western populations.
You seem a believer in the “Peak Oil” theory. I am agnostic on the issue though I do note that most markets are rigged and don’t see any reason to exclude the oil market. By rigged, I mean as most markets , most pots of money just sitting there will attract the scammers of this world. Pretty normal when one thinks about it, that professionals will run markets for their own benefit. I don’t know of any remedy that isn’t worse than the disease thoughBTW.
I am only saying the above as we don’t( protestations of the Peak Oilers notwithstanding) really know how much oil is really out there with any real certainty. I would suggest that as the oil market is a/ vitally important to individual producer countries as well as the world as a whole and b/ involves enormous amounts of money, that it is in the market participant’s interests to make it as opaque as possible. If there were perceived to be plentiful oil out there, it would undermine the “scarcity mentality” of the consumers and lead to consumer resistance of high prices instead of acceptance as we do now for the most part.
If anything, the US would like to deny resources to their rivals, the Chinese. And the Chinese are a big buyer of Iranian oil. And even worse, the Iranians are willing to do business in currencies other than USD. That is the a core reason for attack(one of many). Saddam Hussein made the same mistake, as well as Gaddhafi, selling oil for non US currencies.
It’s always about the money.
cheers Ron