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Monday 3 April 2017

The ‘benefits’ of Conflict with the Islamic Republic?

  The election of Donald Trump has caused tensions to rise, once again, between the United States and Iran over the past months. Trump’s travel ban of 6 different Muslim countries and his criticism of Obama’s administration appeasement towards Iran, signal yet another change in the U.S-Iranian nexus. 

If Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and in fact the ruling class of Iran have a fundamentalist ideology, wouldn’t they want war? Wouldn’t they want to fight the ‘Great Satan’ in an apocalyptic showdown that would bring forth the twelfth Imam?
If the answer, therefore, to these questions are yes. The second thing we must consider is what Western government would benefit from war with Iran? Or who would benefit, on an individual level, from war with Iran?

I will thus leave you with a few conclusions to these questions.

The short answer to the first question would be, apart from Saudi Arabia and Israel, no Western government would benefit from war with Iran. Unless another ‘Trillion dollar wars’ would bring economic growth and prosperity. War with Iran would be another pointless venture with little guarantees that a war could be won in a short space of time or terrorism would decrease. Therefore this directs me to the second question, who would benefit on an individual level from war with Iran?

Although a more complex answer than the first, war with Iran (to my mind) would benefit the executives and shareholders of oil and arms companies, not to mention the stock markets that will profit from trading company stocks.

Iran’s military budget, as of 2016 stand at $6.2 billion with the United States military defence spending being $585 billion. The United States, under the leadership of Trump, seeks to further increase the amount by announcing an extra $54bn of military spending bringing the United States military budget to a staggering $639bn by 2018. To further put this into perspective in 2016 the entire Russian defence budget was $65.8bn. Trump’s additional defence spending will be $11.8bn short of Russian entire defence spending of 2016. The fact that the additional $54 billion of military sending is eight times more than the entire defence budget of Iran, makes one wonder what threat does Iran pose to the United States and its Western Allies?

Although the numbers may be difficult to recognise as a fact, and believe me I find it difficult to understand why a country needs such a big military/defence budget. The numbers raise two important points. 1) Who’s benefiting from this gargantuan amount of military spending and 2) could a new arms race/ conflict be the unfortunate result of this? It is now becoming clear that the military-industrial complex stands to benefit from increased tensions between Washington and Iran. But will these tensions and an increase in the United States military arsenal, with it’s  secure knowledge of being the world’s sole military super power, cause a new conflict in the Middle East?

The region surrounding Iran, in particular around the Persian Gulf, produces 28 per cent of the world oil and has 55 per cent of the world’s proven oil reserves. Any disruption to the follow of oil will cause a vast downturn in the world economy (as in 1971), with the likely target for both Iranian and American efforts being concentrated around the Straits of Hormuz with one fifth of the world oil being transported through the Straits.

I do not deny that Iran constitutes a challenge to stability in the Middle East. However this challenge cannot be solved through increased military spending, and increased tensions, but rather through cooperation and dialogue. The increase in the United States military defence spending and the rhetoric from Washington suggests America could be sleepwalking into a conflict that will cause more instability in the Middle East. However if you are a CEO or a shareholder of an arms or oil company, a pretty penny could be made from this instability.


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