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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