Has anyone played poker here? You know, I used to work for a world-class poker champion in a capacity that had nothing to do with poker. Anyway, he was a perceptive fellow in all things and once said "'Go Fish' is a card game you play with people. Poker is a people game you play with cards." Therein lies the truth, in my opinion: Ahmadinejad is playing international politics- which makes poker look like a kid's game. There are bluffs, feints, playing the fool, playing the pride-filled idiot. Ahmadinejad is no fool. Ahmadinejad is making these statements for a reason.
In my opinion, that reasons are:
A) There has never been a better time to challenge the United States. Debt-riddled, almost paralyzed from the internal political battles within it, stretched militarily thin. There is also something else- Ahmadinejad has noticed that of the postures taken by nations toward the United States, especially developing nuclear nations, North Korea has gotten away with its ambitions,
scott-free. He has see the intense political hyperbole given by Kim Il-Jung and he has watched the United States stay the hell away from that country. The United States is toothless economically and militarily, aside from nuclear weapons, is spread so thin as to be in a position of weakness.
B) There has never been a better time to challenge Israel. Their economy is faring only a
little better than that of the United States. A number of successive conservative governments and responses to terror attacks have shifted the overall political climate of Israel much farther to the right than I believe its founders would have ever been comfortable with. The Israeli poverty class now exists with bread lines for the poor. This in itself is a horrible thing for most Israelis to contemplate- Israel was created to be a safe haven for Jews everywhere but especially a place
where they might be allowed to prosper. However, it always comes down to
guns or
butter and through necessity or choice they have selected the militarization of their country.
Now let's look at who the US makes war against: Make no doubt about it- the U.S. does not fight against foes it does not think it can win against. To it's people, it says one thing, but it is not the reality. Look at the numerous invasions of foreign countries, starting at least as far back as the 1980's: U.S. Invasion of Grenada, US sends troops to seize Panama's Manuel Noriega, U.S. invades Iraq
a la Gulf War I, U.S. invades Iraq
a la Gulf War II. I may have forgotten some and certainly the small paramilitary organizations and corrupt nations we have propped up are almost countless.
But do you notice something in the scale of conflicts? The U.S., simply put, is an empire in its twilight unable to address any of it's publicly-declared enemies: Famously, Russia, China, North Korea. Nor does it wish to- most of these countries are major holders of the public debt. Yes, we have been selling our debt to our enemies. We owe money to them. This puts us in a very weak position. Outside of militarily conquering those nations there is no way to remove that debt. No way.
So the U.S. contents itself with an invasion here, an invasion there when the smaller members of the formerly-U.S. "world"
get out of line in a manner of speaking.
But Iran is no Iraq. Not geographically, not politically, not militarily. They are a much stronger, more cohesive nation than the tin-pot dictatorial regime that Saddam ran. They also have some very big friends. The same friends we owe lots of money to: Russia, China. If we attack them the most immediate repercussion will likely not be militaristic but
economic.
What flies faster than an ICBM? A stock trade, a currency sale. A nuclear weapon may be able to only destroy one city, or depopulate a region. However economic leverage can take the meat off of every table in a nation. That is power.
And that is the sort of power that Iran and it's supporters bring to the table. In a conventional military conflict, the Iranians would
beat us with the current state of our armed forces. Read that last line again.
But Ahmadinejad is the PM of Iran and so all things he thinks, all things he does are meant to
increase Iran's share of a rapidly-dwindling global pie of influence and wealth. His machinations make Israel nervous, and with good (but maybe not obvious) reasons. Economically, as the dollar goes so does the Israeli shekel. The Israelis know this and are worried that their own economy, tied so closely to the United States', is also in jeopardy. I believe very few sensible Israelis believe that as soon as Iran gets the atom bomb that it will use it on Israel. It's preposterous, suicidal and if Iran had such a death-wish they could have exercised it a decade ago and been utterly destroyed by Israel as they would be today.
Also, something to note: The Iranians are switching their oil sales from Dollars to Euros. When you're allegedly so hell-bent on destroying the world, bringing about the armageddon, or whatever, it is an interesting footnote to observe that Iran is making special preparations to be as wealthy as possible, as long as possible. These moves do not smack so much of an immediate desire to bring about World War III but to do something even worse: Iran's hyperbolic posturing will likely result in U.S. hesitation, allowing Iran to both acquire nuclear technologies (making it a world-class political player) and to sink another skewer into both the US and Israeli economies.
Iran knows that if they can ramp up this escalation of words the United States will be preoccupied with a military solution to what is really an economic blade- aimed squarely at the solar plexus of both the United States' and Israel's economies. And sure enough they are. To the Israelis and the Americans, if Iran is allowed to switch to Euros for sale of oil, it could mean the death-knell for their own flagging economies. And the Iranian oil bourse (exchange) is set to go live next week. Iraq, just before our latest invasion of that country made an attempt to switch from PetroDollars to PetroEuros. After the invasion we changed it back to Dollars.
Not only, as Frank Herbert says in the book
Dune, must the spice flow but
it must be sold in our currency. Sale of oil in US dollars is one of the main reasons why the dollar is a worldwide currency.
If the United States, or Israel, or both, attack Iran, especially after our behavior in Iraq, there will be a worldwide cry against us both. Will those nations condemn us to the sword? Hardly. They can destroy or at least cripple further both of our nations' economies simply by selling the Dollars they own in exchange for the Euro.
In short, they've got us by the balls. And they are squeezing. If we attack them, we increase the chance that foreign holders of US Treasury Securities will sell them. If we do not, the popularization of the Euro will eventually become so attractive as to cause the Dollar dump anyway.Ahmadinejad is neither insane nor a fool. With the council he receives from Russia and China he is playing us like a fiddle and will continue to do so. If the United States or Israel or
both attack and destroy Iran, we will only bring about our eventual economic collapse
more quickly than scheduled.
I invite criticism of this perspective.
PB
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