The United States, unable to defeat a regional power like Iran militarily, is forced to shift its priorities and try to defeat it economically. But to do so, it will need the help of other countries to accomplish this feat.
This is obviously a surprising turn of events, because it represents an admission by official Washington that it has lost the war with Iran. Now it is begging China to help crush Iran economically, since this type of economic warfare will only work if Beijing cooperates. Without China, the economic assault on Iran is doomed to fail just as miserably as the unprovoked military effort that Washington has launched against that country.
As a preface: We do not believe that Beijing will give in, resulting in Washington suffering a humiliating defeat at the hands of Iran. This is dangerous because given Trump’s nature, he might resort to something crazy rather than accept defeat. Regardless, Iran will continue to be a tough nut to crack.
The reality is that the US economy is in greater danger of collapse than Iran’s. The chaos Trump has created by raising the global cost of gasoline, diesel, and fertilizer is setting the stage for a global famine by 2027. The Treasury Department’s plan to avert economic disaster by buying up its now $40 trillion debt also looks set to fail. Interest rates are rising and the stock market is crashing.
The recently proposed sanctions on Iran are secondary sanctions. This means that any country that continues to trade with Iran will be sanctioned and cut off from trade with the US and its allies. If China, India or Turkey continue to buy Iranian oil or other products, for example, they will be hit with economic sanctions from the US and its allies. How feasible is this?
This seems to hurt the US more than China, because the US is heavily dependent on Chinese imports, both for its military and civilian economies. Chinese rare earth minerals, for example, are needed to make several key US missiles and drone components.
But the high-profile effort to convince China to help crush Iran also confirms what we already knew. The Trump administration is literally obsessed with Iran and cannot let go of the region. Why else would he risk everything three months before the midterm elections just to destroy Iran, a country that claims to have no military capability after months of US and Israeli bombing?
It is not enough to weaken Iran, degrade its military capabilities, and “eliminate” its nuclear program. Iran must be destroyed entirely. As in Venezuela, Iran’s oil must be stolen to help reduce the US debt (for more analysis on this issue please read the article titled “The High Significance of Iranian Oil on the US Geopolitical Chessboard“).
Bessant told CNBC that both allies and adversaries will be forced to choose sides in Washington’s latest campaign to economically isolate Iran. “This will be the largest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world. And we go to them and say, you are either with us or against us. It will work against Iran and we will collapse this regime.”
All of this sounds like the desperate rants of a man in charge of the finances of a failed empire. Treasury Secretary Bessant is as delusional as the man he works for.
Because if this economic isolation is successful, the very people who claimed to want to “liberate” Iranians from the mullahs will leave Iranians to starve in the streets. And so far, the Chinese have shown no interest in participating in Trump’s plan to starve the Iranians.
Incidentally, China is sending weapons, intelligence, satellite data, etc., to Iran that help Tehran strike US military installations in the Gulf with pinpoint accuracy.
This is what happens when you start a war under false pretenses. The entire US rationale for this war was based on lies, that Iran is run by a maniacal group of religious zealots who, if allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, would immediately use them against Israel. This never made sense, as the Iranians know that they will guarantee their complete annihilation within minutes. The Iranians are astute geopolitical players. Not the crazy zealots portrayed in the Western media.
And yet, in the eyes of sociopathic American neocons, the possibility of a few Iranian nukes was somehow a greater threat than thousands of nukes in the hands of Russia, China, Pakistan, India, and North Korea.
Trump actually embraces and gets along with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un, who already possesses nuclear weapons capable of striking the American mainland and has made real threats to launch them at the US.
All of these mentally deranged American neocons also believed the flawed Israeli intelligence that said the Iranian government would collapse within days or weeks of a US/Israeli airstrike because the Iranian people would rise up and reject their oppressive Islamic government.
Arguments that were and are completely absurd, but somehow had and still have special weight with millions of Trump’s MAGA followers, even when they are exposed as a proven fraud.
The United States is proving to be not the exceptional, virtuous nation that its propaganda claims it is. It is an extremely violent and criminal empire that has accumulated a monstrous amount of guilt and a monstrous debt that amounts to $40 trillion, by now. No other country comes close to this level of absolute economic debt.
This is not simply a matter of unchecked economic insolvency. It is an ominous sign of a country desperately trying to salvage its historical failure through the scorched earth tactics of endless wars, whether military or economic.
Recall that this year the United States celebrated 250 years since its founding as a modern nation. For most of its history, about 95 percent of its 250 years, it has been at war, either militarily or economically, as evidenced by its own congressional records and esteemed historians.
No other modern country comes close to this level of warlike behavior, and this is one reason why no other country comes close to the level of U.S. economic debt. In short, war and debt are closely linked as cause and effect.
The real danger for the rest of the world is that the empire will quickly collapse after decades of abuse and corruption. And to delay this reckoning, the US ruling class is fomenting wars as a desperate attempt to create a new world order that it bets will somehow benefit US-Zionist capitalism.
The US is exposed as incapable of confronting Iran, which is now dominant in the eastern Middle East. The US empire is collapsing, that does not mean we should follow it, nor be carried away by the great end-times fraud of a “rules-based international order.”
