Guest Post by Leo Hohmann
It appears that the other shoe just dropped in the U.S. war with Iran. And with this news, the war has the potential to quickly spread into a wider Middle East conflict, laying what I believe is a clever trap for President Trump.
Because Trump has a monster ego, he will likely walk into Iran’s trap.
According to multiple media outlets, Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis declared today, July 20, an immediate naval blockade on Saudi Arabia.
This brings the U.S./Israel-Iran war officially to the southern entrance of the Red Sea, shutting down an export route through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait used by the Saudis to bypass disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.
Oil that was being rerouted from the Strait of Hormuz into the Red Sea and up through the Suez Canal in Egypt will now be cut off if Yemen is able to make good on its stated mission. This will wreck the Egyptian economy, possibly drawing that country into the war against Iran.
Today’s announcement is essentially the Houthis joining the war against the U.S. and Israel, and it will be catastrophic for the global economy, which is already on life support because of the Strait of Hormuz being closed to 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.
The Houthis said their “maritime embargo” was retaliation for what it described as a Saudi siege of Yemen, Reuters reported.
Iran had previously instructed the Houthis to prepare to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait if the United States continued attacking Iranian power infrastructure.
This strait serves as the corridor into the Red Sea that leads up to Egypt and then through the Suez Canal and into Europe. A full closure could disrupt oil shipments equivalent to 7% of global supply, on top of the 20% already being disrupted at the Strait of Hormuz. According to Reuters, this leaves Saudi Arabia exposed at both ends of its export system as tanker traffic through Hormuz remains sharply reduced.
The Houthi declaration followed a ninth consecutive night of U.S. attacks on Iran. Tehran reported strikes in Tabriz, Chabahar, Konarak, Bandar Mahshahr and Bandar Imam Khomeini, while Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had attacked U.S. military assets in Jordan, Kuwait and Syria. Kuwait also reported another attack on one of its desalination plants, causing a fire.
Kuwait depends on desalination plants for 90 percent of its fresh water needs. The other Gulf countries depend on these plants for anywhere from 70 to 90 percent. If Iran keeps bombing them, it will cause a humanitarian and refugee crisis, with millions of refugees being forced to flee the region, probably into Turkey and Europe.
Oil movements through the Gulf are deteriorating rapidly. Expect fuel prices to continue on an upward trend, probably at a faster pace than what we’ve seen over the last three months.
Brent crude briefly traded above $90 per barrel after the blockade announcement was made Monday, before retreating to $89 as traders assessed reports of renewed efforts to jumpstart the peace talks.
At this point, anyone who believes we are going to have peace in the Middle East is nuts. Totally naïve. Do not listen to them. We might see another temporary lull, used only to rearm and move more military assets into position, but this war will not end until at least one side is totally defeated. Right now, both the U.S. and Iran believe they are winning this war. So it will continue to rage.
If it devolves into a long-term war of attrition, which I believe it will, that does not favor the United States. Seeing this, Trump may decide to do something really unwise, like launch a ground invasion of Iran. In fact, I believe that is a trap Iran is trying to lure Trump into. They have 1 million men under arms who will be waiting for any paltry ground invasion the U.S. can muster. Right now there are no more than 10,000 or so U.S. troops in the region. The entire American military force including Army and Marines is only about 450,000. If Trump is foolish enough to pull the trigger on a full-scale ground assault, it will result in a devastating defeat and possibly the end of the American empire.
According to Reuters, Iran has received a proposal for a 10-day ceasefire. I don’t believe Iran will bite this time around.
Don’t believe any of the talk about peace. In order for peace to prevail, there would have to be some level of trust, which is non-existent between the U.S. and Iran.
In an indication of just how volatile the situation is right now, Air France reportedly announced today it has suspended all flights to Saudi Arabia through July 25 and to the UAE through July 28.
Remember, all of the commercial shipping choke points were open for business and flowing freely before the U.S and Israel started this ill-advised war on February 28. They told us it would be over in four or five days, and now here we are nearly five months later and the Iranian regime is firmly in control and still sitting on a large supply of missiles and drones. Our president has lied to us every step of the way, telling us Iran was “totally defeated” and “has nothing left.”
For a country that has been soundly defeated, they have found a way in the last week to decimate U.S. military bases in Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based, and heavily damaged U.S. bases in the UAE, Kuwait and most recently Jordan, where three U.S. Army soldiers were killed on Saturday and dozens injured. Nearly 100 U.S. service members have been injured in Iranian attacks on multiple U.S. bases across the Middle East just in the month of July, according to CBS News. If this is being reported by an establishment media outlet like CBS, you know the numbers are likely much higher.
For a great summary of U.S. foreign policy from the Vietnam era up to today, watch Professor Jeffery Sachs in his July 20 interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano. He recounts the entire disastrous history of how the U.S. has lost every one of its undeclared wars, most of them fought under false pretenses for the enrichment of the billionaire class in the military-industrial complex. It was Eisenhower’s greatest fear, which he warned about in his farewell address, and it has come true, leading to an unsustainable $40 trillion debt.
The most salient point Sachs makes is that our presidents do not determine foreign policy. It is determined for them. Listen particularly to Sachs’ description of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s role in shaping U.S. foreign policy, as portrayed in his 1997 book, The Grand Chess Board. In that book, Brzezinski lays out his vision of a “geopolitical pivot state,” which boils down to the U.S. using any means to maintain its global hegemony. Brzezinski projected in 1997 that Ukraine would be used as a proxy by the U.S. to antagonize Russia.
Brzezinski said the U.S. must take control of Ukraine and push it into NATO. Why? In order to push American power to the Russian border, Brzezinski said in his book.
“We need to use these places to weaken, to divide, to subvert, maybe even overthrow our enemy (in Russia),” Sachs said in describing Washington’s geopolitical strategy.
“Whether it’s Clinton, or Bush or Obama, or Trump 1, or Biden or Trump 2, doesn’t matter. The name of the game in Washington is, we’re number one, and the military-industrial complex will be fed, gluttonously, to the maximum extent, to keep that dominant power, that primacy, and we’ll fight anyone, we’ll subvert any government, we’ll use any geopolitical pivot to do that. And we get all of these countries in trouble. We prove the old adage of Henry Kissinger is true, that to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal!”
At the same time the war in the Middle East is raging out of control, the Russia-Ukraine war is also reaching new heights of escalation. Both sides are hitting the other’s weapons’ depots and energy infrastructure. Parts of Moscow were on fire last night, and Russia struck a train it said was carrying weapons today in Ukraine.
The whole world is either engaged in war or preparing for war, and here in the USA people are talking about voting, the threat of Democratic Socialists and Sharia takeovers. Other nations are warning their citizens to prepare for all-out war with the West. We have no such warnings in America, and in fact our leaders go out of their way to distract us from what’s really going on in the world.
At the very least, we are going to see runaway inflation and potential shortages. Gas prices will soar. Expect food prices to continue rocketing up later this year and into next year, as the shortages of fertilizer caused by the Iran war lead to smaller harvests.
I am firmly convinced that the ill-advised and unwinnable war with Iran will be the trigger that launches the end of America as an unchallenged global superpower.
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[ H/T The Burning Platform ]
This was the worst possible news for those trying to scratch out a living in our teetering economy, but it’s great for the oil companies and war profiteers.
It appears that the other shoe just dropped in the U.S. war with Iran. And with this news, the war has the potential to quickly spread into a wider Middle East conflict, laying what I believe is a clever trap for President Trump.
Because Trump has a monster ego, he will likely walk into Iran’s trap.
According to multiple media outlets, Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis declared today, July 20, an immediate naval blockade on Saudi Arabia.
This brings the U.S./Israel-Iran war officially to the southern entrance of the Red Sea, shutting down an export route through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait used by the Saudis to bypass disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.
Oil that was being rerouted from the Strait of Hormuz into the Red Sea and up through the Suez Canal in Egypt will now be cut off if Yemen is able to make good on its stated mission. This will wreck the Egyptian economy, possibly drawing that country into the war against Iran.
Today’s announcement is essentially the Houthis joining the war against the U.S. and Israel, and it will be catastrophic for the global economy, which is already on life support because of the Strait of Hormuz being closed to 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.
The Houthis said their “maritime embargo” was retaliation for what it described as a Saudi siege of Yemen, Reuters reported.
Iran had previously instructed the Houthis to prepare to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait if the United States continued attacking Iranian power infrastructure.
This strait serves as the corridor into the Red Sea that leads up to Egypt and then through the Suez Canal and into Europe. A full closure could disrupt oil shipments equivalent to 7% of global supply, on top of the 20% already being disrupted at the Strait of Hormuz. According to Reuters, this leaves Saudi Arabia exposed at both ends of its export system as tanker traffic through Hormuz remains sharply reduced.
The Houthi declaration followed a ninth consecutive night of U.S. attacks on Iran. Tehran reported strikes in Tabriz, Chabahar, Konarak, Bandar Mahshahr and Bandar Imam Khomeini, while Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had attacked U.S. military assets in Jordan, Kuwait and Syria. Kuwait also reported another attack on one of its desalination plants, causing a fire.
Kuwait depends on desalination plants for 90 percent of its fresh water needs. The other Gulf countries depend on these plants for anywhere from 70 to 90 percent. If Iran keeps bombing them, it will cause a humanitarian and refugee crisis, with millions of refugees being forced to flee the region, probably into Turkey and Europe.
Oil movements through the Gulf are deteriorating rapidly. Expect fuel prices to continue on an upward trend, probably at a faster pace than what we’ve seen over the last three months.
Brent crude briefly traded above $90 per barrel after the blockade announcement was made Monday, before retreating to $89 as traders assessed reports of renewed efforts to jumpstart the peace talks.
At this point, anyone who believes we are going to have peace in the Middle East is nuts. Totally naïve. Do not listen to them. We might see another temporary lull, used only to rearm and move more military assets into position, but this war will not end until at least one side is totally defeated. Right now, both the U.S. and Iran believe they are winning this war. So it will continue to rage.
If it devolves into a long-term war of attrition, which I believe it will, that does not favor the United States. Seeing this, Trump may decide to do something really unwise, like launch a ground invasion of Iran. In fact, I believe that is a trap Iran is trying to lure Trump into. They have 1 million men under arms who will be waiting for any paltry ground invasion the U.S. can muster. Right now there are no more than 10,000 or so U.S. troops in the region. The entire American military force including Army and Marines is only about 450,000. If Trump is foolish enough to pull the trigger on a full-scale ground assault, it will result in a devastating defeat and possibly the end of the American empire.
According to Reuters, Iran has received a proposal for a 10-day ceasefire. I don’t believe Iran will bite this time around.
Don’t believe any of the talk about peace. In order for peace to prevail, there would have to be some level of trust, which is non-existent between the U.S. and Iran.
In an indication of just how volatile the situation is right now, Air France reportedly announced today it has suspended all flights to Saudi Arabia through July 25 and to the UAE through July 28.
Remember, all of the commercial shipping choke points were open for business and flowing freely before the U.S and Israel started this ill-advised war on February 28. They told us it would be over in four or five days, and now here we are nearly five months later and the Iranian regime is firmly in control and still sitting on a large supply of missiles and drones. Our president has lied to us every step of the way, telling us Iran was “totally defeated” and “has nothing left.”
For a country that has been soundly defeated, they have found a way in the last week to decimate U.S. military bases in Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based, and heavily damaged U.S. bases in the UAE, Kuwait and most recently Jordan, where three U.S. Army soldiers were killed on Saturday and dozens injured. Nearly 100 U.S. service members have been injured in Iranian attacks on multiple U.S. bases across the Middle East just in the month of July, according to CBS News. If this is being reported by an establishment media outlet like CBS, you know the numbers are likely much higher.
For a great summary of U.S. foreign policy from the Vietnam era up to today, watch Professor Jeffery Sachs in his July 20 interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano. He recounts the entire disastrous history of how the U.S. has lost every one of its undeclared wars, most of them fought under false pretenses for the enrichment of the billionaire class in the military-industrial complex. It was Eisenhower’s greatest fear, which he warned about in his farewell address, and it has come true, leading to an unsustainable $40 trillion debt.
The most salient point Sachs makes is that our presidents do not determine foreign policy. It is determined for them. Listen particularly to Sachs’ description of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s role in shaping U.S. foreign policy, as portrayed in his 1997 book, The Grand Chess Board. In that book, Brzezinski lays out his vision of a “geopolitical pivot state,” which boils down to the U.S. using any means to maintain its global hegemony. Brzezinski projected in 1997 that Ukraine would be used as a proxy by the U.S. to antagonize Russia.
Brzezinski said the U.S. must take control of Ukraine and push it into NATO. Why? In order to push American power to the Russian border, Brzezinski said in his book.
“We need to use these places to weaken, to divide, to subvert, maybe even overthrow our enemy (in Russia),” Sachs said in describing Washington’s geopolitical strategy.
“Whether it’s Clinton, or Bush or Obama, or Trump 1, or Biden or Trump 2, doesn’t matter. The name of the game in Washington is, we’re number one, and the military-industrial complex will be fed, gluttonously, to the maximum extent, to keep that dominant power, that primacy, and we’ll fight anyone, we’ll subvert any government, we’ll use any geopolitical pivot to do that. And we get all of these countries in trouble. We prove the old adage of Henry Kissinger is true, that to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal!”
At the same time the war in the Middle East is raging out of control, the Russia-Ukraine war is also reaching new heights of escalation. Both sides are hitting the other’s weapons’ depots and energy infrastructure. Parts of Moscow were on fire last night, and Russia struck a train it said was carrying weapons today in Ukraine.
The whole world is either engaged in war or preparing for war, and here in the USA people are talking about voting, the threat of Democratic Socialists and Sharia takeovers. Other nations are warning their citizens to prepare for all-out war with the West. We have no such warnings in America, and in fact our leaders go out of their way to distract us from what’s really going on in the world.
At the very least, we are going to see runaway inflation and potential shortages. Gas prices will soar. Expect food prices to continue rocketing up later this year and into next year, as the shortages of fertilizer caused by the Iran war lead to smaller harvests.
I am firmly convinced that the ill-advised and unwinnable war with Iran will be the trigger that launches the end of America as an unchallenged global superpower.
Tweet
Continue reading...
[ H/T The Burning Platform ]
