This week, the Trump administration has declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, a formal international sanction that will further antagonize Tehran while inhibiting the ability of European Union and Asian states to engage in commerce with that country. The video posted above from The Real News is quite good and has some worthwhile conversation points to consider that Col. Larry Wilkerson contributes.
We’ll keep on top of these developments in the coming days and weeks, particularly because this is a move that could have a substantial impact on multinational commerce and here is why: Currently the worldwide reserve currency is the American dollar and its fraternal twin, the Saudi petro-dollar, a currency invented in the 1970s to replace the Bretton Woods gold standard system. But if you are a state on the growing list of sanctioned governments being built by the White House (Iran, Russia, Venezuela, et. al.), your government is effectively barred from using the American dollar and the petro-dollar, meaning that you are prohibited international trade and commerce. However, recent indications show that the Chinese have been working with Riyadh to develop a new petro-yuan, which could start out as a parallel substitute before eventually totally replacing the American dollar/petro-dollar as the reserve currency. If and when that happens, the results would be gigantic, with a currency deflation in the US and the potential collapse of our over-extended military empire that would very quickly become impossible to maintain.
This is all noteworthy because, despite the fact that the Saudis are engaged in a regional Cold War with Iran that the US has been using to its advantage in the past 20 years, it does not seem at all out of bounds to suggest that the Chinese could step into the middle of the feud between Tehran and Riyadh. Perhaps in the fashion of a responsible no-nonsense boxing referee, Beijing would negotiate a settlement between the two opponents owing to the Marxist-Leninist-Xi Jinping Theoretical law of money talks and bullshit walks.
What is also so absolutely strange about this newest American policy is how deeply indebted the George W. Bush neocons, now back in the saddle with the Trump administration, are to Iran for helping it save face with the American public in the early 2000s. Though it is not remembered by apparently anyone, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, roughly equivalent to our Navy Seals or Army Special Forces, played a role in helping America defeat the Taliban and taking on al Queda in Afghanistan. This was because, two years before 9/11, the Taliban had murdered Iranian diplomats, leading to a war that eventually would be absorbed by the larger American campaign after the attacks on the World Trade Center. Remember, the neocons were caught with their pants down the day of those attacks and were plainly grasping for straws after probably the biggest intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor. Ouster of the Taliban gave the Bush administration a lease on life that saved it from a public relations catastrophe. (The fact this also eventuated the catastrophic invasion/pillage of Iraq is equally heartbreaking, but then again the Iranians had a few reasons to hate Saddam Hussein…)
So there’s a few things to consider as this story develops in the coming weeks. The prospect of an American invasion of Iran is insane, the last person who had any success with that one was Alexander the Great (just ask Saddam all about his effort, one we prompted him to take up)…
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