234. Iran now has a more entrenched regime
As the war in the Middle East enters its fourth week, it is now taking a deadly turn. Besides energy, a water crisis is now looming across the Gulf region, rattling the whole region. If you watch and analyse minutely, Israel is the main culprit and now in far more trouble.
More than 2,000 people have been killed since 28 February, when the US and Israel began their attacks on Iran.
On Saturday, the US president gave Iran 48 hours – until shortly before midnight GMT on Monday – to open the Strait of Hormuz, or the US would hit and obliterate Iranian power plants, starting with the biggest one first.
But Iran says the Strait is open to all shipping, except vessels linked to Iran’s enemies, with passage possible upon coordination of security arrangements with Tehran.
The narrow Strait, which carries about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, has already caused the world’s worst oil crisis since the 1970s and sent European gas prices surging as much as 35%.
Iran has said it will irreversibly destroy essential infrastructure across the Middle East if the US attacks its energy sites, hours after Donald Trump threatened.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, has warned that vital infrastructure, as well as energy and oil infrastructure across the region, would become legitimate targets as soon as his country’s own was attacked.
An Iranian military spokesperson said any strike on Iran’s energy facilities would prompt attacks on US and Israeli energy and assets across the region, specifically information technology and desalination facilities.
Trump’s threat had placed a 48-hour ticking time bomb of elevated uncertainty over energy and financial markets.
Tomorrow will be Black Monday, as we are certain to see a plunging stock market and surging energy prices.
The World Health Organization said that the war was at a perilous stage and called for restraint since attacks targeting nuclear sites create an escalating threat to public health and environmental safety.
Now, a desperate Netanyahu is calling countries of the world to come and fight Iran. The Israel Defense Forces had said Iran had missiles that can reach London, Paris, or Berlin. But there is no assessment backing claims that Iran was planning to strike Europe.
Right from 1979, all the American presidents knew that if they conducted a war with Iran, one of the great vulnerabilities was the Strait of Hormuz, and it could create an immense oil crisis that could drive the price of fuel sky-high. That was the restraint. Trump must have also been advised, but Trump, being Trump, probably ignored that.
I strongly feel that this war is only going to make Iran stronger and a bigger threat to Israel.
Leon Panetta, former US defence secretary and Central Intelligence Agency director, has put it correctly, “We replaced an old guy, a supreme leader who was near death at a time when the people of Iran were willing to take to the streets with the hope that they could ultimately change their way of government. And instead, today we have a more entrenched regime, a younger supreme leader who’s going to be there a while, and he’s much more of a hardliner than the first. That didn’t turn out too well.”
But what can we expect from a president who is glad that Robert Mueller, the former special counsel who oversaw the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, is dead? Mueller served as FBI director from 2001 to 2013 and was a Vietnam War hero.
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have become the biggest enemies of the whole world and also enemies of humanity.