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Welcome to World War III. It began long ago.
Now, regional wars are increasingly becoming intertwined. This is how the “real” world war emerges—like a massive, widespread conflagration.
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Yeah, right. That’s how simple Donald Trump had imagined it: he’d just go ahead and wipe out the Iranian mullah regime in a regime-change maneuver. And with that, he’d emerge as the resounding victor in the midterm elections this coming November. After all, Trump had supposedly taken down socialist Venezuela with ease and had the elected president, Nicolás Maduro, hauled off to New York as a hunting trophy.
What did the great man care that military and intelligence officials begged him to back off from the Iranian adventure? Iran, they said, was a whole different ballgame from the sandy deserts of Iraq or the corrupt ruling clique in Venezuela. Together with the Israeli armed forces, Trump launched a war of aggression against Iran in violation of international law. Trump quickly turned the Iranian people against him. The attempt to simply steal Iran’s uranium reserves ended near Isfahan in a miniature version of Napoleon’s Waterloo[1].
What should have been a matter of a few hours or days turned into costly weeks. Meanwhile, the global economy was sputtering. Certain glimmers of realism then led to the Memorandum of Understanding. Here, the benevolent global hegemon, the U.S., could have gotten off with just a slap on the wrist.
But an attempt by a ship to cunningly circumvent the regulations dictated by Iran for transit through the Strait of Hormuz ended with that very ship being fired upon. Trump subsequently ordered strikes on ninety Iranian targets. In return, Iran was now pulverizing U.S. military bases in Jordan with greater ease than ever before.
So. Now it’s like a schoolyard brawl: everyone’s calling in their big brother, and soon the whole crowd of students is in the courtyard engaged in a massive brawl. Saudi Arabia is now actively intervening, but doesn’t yet dare to take on powerful Iran. Instead, as a warning shot, it first strikes an Iran-friendly Shiite militia in Iraq. Meanwhile, from Yemen, the Ansar Allah fighters—mistakenly referred to by the West as Houthis—are firing drones and cruise missiles at Saudi Arabia. The Ansar Allah fighters are stationed at the mouth of the Red Sea at the Bab al-Mandab Strait and aim to block the Saudis from transporting their oil from the Red Sea to customers in India or China. Since the Saudis are already prevented from shipping their oil through the Strait of Hormuz, they had been pumping their oil via a pipeline to the Red Sea. Now the route through Bab al-Mandab is also blocked. So the Saudis must transport their oil through the Suez Canal—a costly and time-consuming route via Africa—to their end customers. But the first drone has already struck in Egypt[2].
However, it was a U.S. tanker that was hit first. If the Suez Canal is also closed to the Saudis, things will get really tight for the sheikhs. So the Saudis will literally have to fight their way to keep their transport routes open. The small sheikhdoms in the Persian Gulf are also caught in Iran’s trap. Thus, a confrontation between Israel and the U.S. on one side and Iran on the other turns into a regional war involving nearly all the neighboring countries.
Next Step: Linking the Major Theaters of Conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East
Until now, the Russian Federation and Iran have been able to conduct trade and commerce by sea across the Caspian Sea relatively unhindered. And in doing so, they have indisputably exchanged military goods as well. For example, the Russians are using cruise missiles from Iran in the war in Ukraine. Iran benefits from Russian satellite imagery of the war zone in the Middle East. Recently, however, Ukrainian cruise missiles attacked merchant ships in the Caspian Sea; among them was an Iranian cargo ship[3]. An Iranian sailor was killed in the attack, and other crew members were injured. In fact, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy subsequently claimed that the attacked vessel was a transport ship carrying weapons for Iran. Zelenskyy drew a connection between the Russian attacks in Ukraine and Iran’s complicity. The tone between Iran and Ukraine has become more strident. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian side is working to de-escalate the situation. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, stating that the attack on the Iranian cargo ship had not been intentional[4]. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accepted this half-hearted apology but reserved the right to take further action and, to save face, demanded compensation. However, in diplomatic practice, it is clear that this settles the matter.
In the long term, however, this Ukrainian military strike on the Caspian Sea means that peace in the region can no longer be maintained. This region, which has been peaceful until now, is now becoming a theater of war. And the link between the theaters of war in Ukraine and the Middle East has been irrevocably established.
Next Step: Europe Has to Be Included!
And so far, the Western Europeans—at least on the surface—still seem to be nothing more than spectators. They are still separated from the horrors of war in Ukraine and the Middle East by the comfortable screen of their TV or computer monitor. That will soon change. For the warmongers, sitting and scrambling in the safety of Washington and on the New York Stock Exchange, are eagerly striving to drag the Western Europeans irrevocably into this conflict.
After all, U.S. President Trump doesn’t want to wear out his super-expensive warships in a bloodbath in the Middle East. The massive aircraft carrier “Gerald Ford,” worth 36 billion dollars, has long since returned heroically to the U.S. after the men’s restrooms allegedly went on strike[5]. How fortunate that the Western Europeans serve as terrestrial aircraft carriers! For although all signs point to the fact that continuing the war against Iran will send the global economy into a tailspin, Trump is going “all in.” All or nothing. And that mirrors the attitude of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. They seem to be following the motto: better an end with horror than horror without end! The devout guardsmen have long since realized that a major American offensive is on the way. Aviation observers are detecting massive movements of U.S. aircraft from the U.S. and from U.S. bases in Europe toward the Middle East.
Specifically:
- Large numbers of F-16 fighter jets are taking off from the U.S. base in Spangdahlem, Germany, near Trier, and heading toward the Middle East.
- F-35 jets are taking off from the British base at Lakenheath.
- Further movements are being reported from U.S. bases in Italy[6].
- So-called stratotankers—aircraft that refuel fighter jets in flight because the fighter jets have a limited range—are taking off from southern France. These are the KC-135 Stratotanker and KC-46 Pegasus models.
- Troops, ammunition, and all manner of military equipment are currently being transported to areas near Iran aboard C-17 Globemaster III and C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft.
- The complete relocation of entire squadrons from Europe to West Asia is highly unusual.
- U.S. military aircraft are using airports in Israel, just a few hundred kilometers from Iran[7].
Western Europe has, in fact, been a direct military adversary of the Russian Federation for some time now. This is because Ukraine has long since been unable—financially, in terms of personnel, and technically—to continue the war against Russia. As I explained in my previous opinion piece, Ukrainian military capabilities have long since been outsourced to Germany, France, and the United Kingdom[8]. The Russian government made it clear some time ago that it views the European NATO member states as its true adversaries and, accordingly, will no longer go easy on Western Europe in the long term.
And now, on top of that, there’s Western Europe’s direct confrontation with Iran. The Bulgarian parliament has approved the temporary deployment of U.S. Stratotankers on its territory. In other words, these U.S. warplanes will be stationed in Bulgaria so they can reach Iran more quickly from there. And as this news report shows, this has set off the next round of tensions:
“Bulgaria’s parliament on Wednesday approved the temporary stationing of U.S. tanker aircraft at its Bezmer military base despite Iran’s warning that the move would constitute complicity in, aggression and war crimes‘, a charge that Sofia dismissed.“[9]
Hooray! Yet another escalation toward global conflagration. At least we may still have some hope here. After all, Trump probably can’t keep up this “all-or-nothing” game for long without the U.S. engine eventually seizing up. The US-led world order’s almost terrorist-like fixation on fossil fuels is proving to be a boomerang. To ensure that US citizens can continue to cruise across the country in their beloved gas-guzzling cars, Trump has drained the US strategic oil reserves to a historic low. At 311 million barrels, oil levels are at their lowest since 1983! Experts say that if the strategic oil reserves fall below the 300-million-barrel mark, these stocks can no longer be preserved for much longer for technical reasons. However, since U.S. citizens consume 20 million barrels of oil per day, the limit at which Trump can keep his fellow citizens happy with further oil handouts will soon be reached[10]. Widespread price increases and disruptions to supply chains will cost the West dearly.
So, Trump may well be the undertaker of U.S. imperialism …
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Hermann Ploppa is a political scientist and journalist. Ploppa recently published the book “Der Neue Feudalismus – Privatisierung, Blackrock, Plattformkapitalismus” (The New Feudalism – Privatization, Blackrock, Platform Capitalism). As Amazon does not yet stock the book, it is best to order it from the author at: [email protected]. Visit the author’s blog here.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Notes
[1]https://hermannploppa.substack.com/p/liberation-of-brave-soldiers-or-nuclear?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=5734834
[7] https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-902950
[8]https://hermannploppa.substack.com/p/ukraine-is-at-warwere-footing-the?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=5734834
Featured image is from the author
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