Iran — I Ran So Far Away
Part 1 (Reasons Shmeasons)
Recently a noted longtime critic of Israeli and American foreign policy gained a lot of attention online when Prof. Norman Finkelstein criticized Tucker Carlson’s vision of American foreign policy. Tucker has been saying that America’s political elites and Trump are obviously under the control of Netanyahu or Israel. Finkelstein, like many others from the academic foreign policy commentariat like Noam Chomsky, has been critical for a long time of that view of American foreign policy. He and they insist: Israel is NOT the one in the drivers seat.
That view of America in control of its foreign policy is simultaneously bewildering and often angering to those espousing the contrary view. To them it is just plain obvious that America has no reason to fight wars in the Middle East of its own.
The Finkelstein camp says American foreign policy may be aligned with Israel at times, but that Americans have always been driving American policy for very American reasons. There is a famous story that popular “futurist” and economic historian Michael Hudson likes to tell about how in the 1960s when he was working with and in the same room with the future head of Israeli intelligence at The Hudson Institute, an American General walked up to the Israeli all slap-happy and put his arm around his back while boisterously joking that he loved Israel because it was America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East.
That view is not the dominant view among the political commentariat on the left and right these days. It has been critiqued for many years by those who insist Israel is the one in control.
You have to wonder though, if they are right, what does Israel get from the current Iran war? The answer proffered by people like Tucker Carlson and the boisterous masses online is that the Israelis want to dominate the Middle East and Iran is in their way. Some also say Israel wants to control Iran’s oil industry. What does America get out of the war, they ask rhetorically, with the answer implied as “nothing.” According to that dominant worldview online — America is Israel’s puppet because otherwise American foreign policy makes no sense. That view is so all-pervasive online that Trump felt compelled to publicly deny it.
What does America get out of it? For a long time the academic left has agreed with economist Michael Hudson when he says the goal is to control the global fossil fuel industry. Because by that control America can easily control all nations without the need to use military force. For example, when the Ukraine war started Michael Hudson said the real target was Europe. He said the goal was to get European nations off of Russian energy because America cannot control it. Now, European nations are dependent on American energy.
Why would Israel want to go to war against Iran knowing full well their large stock of missiles and drones can cause massive damage to Israel — is that worth maybe winning the war, and then maybe getting something out of it, even though American elites may also want to gain control over Iran’s oil and gas like they did to Iraq and Venezuela?
Does it make sense that America’s role as the world’s financial hegemon is not something that the financial elite establishment wants to give up? Maybe they see control over Iran’s energy as a way to achieve that? Let’s look at some history:
The dollar as reserve currency was and is based on the petro-dollar system. That system is what has made America’s financial elites feel invincible and all-powerful since it started in the 1970s. And you can be sure they do not want to lose that powerful feeling of ruling over the world for fun and profit.
American financial power sky-rocketed after President Nixon “closed the gold window” in 1971, which meant the treasury was no longer going to take dollars from the worlds banks and give them back gold. From then on the dollar would not be backed by anything. In order to make sure the world would continue to use the dollar as reserve currency without the ability to get anything for the dollars, Nixon and Kissinger made a deal with countries in the Middle East to only sell their oil for dollars. By doing so they would be protected by America.
That “petro-dollar system” made dollars needed by every nation who wanted to buy oil. Which meant that everyone but America needed to buy those dollars. Because America can simply print dollars for free America has a huge advantage over the world as long as dollars are needed by the world to buy oil.
What would happen if the dollar lost that power in the world financial system? America’s financial hegemonic power and the “economic free lunch” would be no more. In fact, after the communist bloc fell apart, plans were made by very smart people looking to figure out how to make sure America never loses their position as the financial hegemon of the world.
So America does indeed have a reason all of its own, to try to control Iran: Stopping big oil-producing nations that want to sell their oil in other currencies. When did the Iraq war start? Not long after Saddam Hussein rejected the petro-dollar system. Before Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown he was in the process of creating a gold-backed currency for Africa that would bypass the petrodollar system.
Part 2 (In which Doris gets her oats)
What if after US elites realized they had stupidly become so deeply dependent on Chinese manufacturing they then realized:
Bringing manufacturing back to America is absolutely necessary.
Which in fact as everyone knows, Trump’s tariffs were for that purpose. So how is that working out?
Well, it could go two different ways:
1) Make American workers able to afford working for low wages since manufacturing in America at the current wage rates makes products noncompetitive with lower-wage nations. How to do that? There is really only one way: Offer cheap housing, transportation, healthcare, energy, and education. Those essentials are so expensive in America that if they are not made much cheaper — there is no way to survive on lower wages — and therefore manufacturing will not move back to America if they cannot compete because they are paying high wages to American middle class families.
or…
2) Force other countries to move their manufacturing to America by making energy so expensive for them that they simply cannot compete on the world market. Therefore, in order to survive they must move plants somewhere where they can get cheaper energy. First though they may try to make it work by importing millions of low-wage workers from poverty-stricken areas of the world.
Sound like anywhere to you?…Europe?
What has the war in Ukraine accomplished? And why was Russia provoked so unnecessarily? They could have promised to not expand NATO and stop attacking the Donbas. But they went to war instead knowing they could not win against Russia. Why? That war has made energy in Europe so expensive that manufacturing in Germany, the manufacturing center of Europe, has gradually been moving elsewhere — including to America.
What is the war in Iran accomplishing? It is making it so much worse for European manufacturing, and really anywhere where they need to import fossil fuels. And whaddaya know — America has lots of much cheaper energy AND untold millions of “illegal immigrants” who are desperate for work and fearful of being grabbed by the ICEMAN Coming.
Crazy theory? Maybe. Maybe not.
So many people are so sure the war on Iran makes no sense. Therefore their conclusion is that Trump must be either a puppet of crazy maniacs, or that he is himself crazy. They are all like: “Why would the Trump team be making such an unforced error, can’t they see that Iran can easily destroy the energy infrastructure of the world?”
Yes.
Yes they can.
