{"id":372990,"date":"2018-08-11T18:51:37","date_gmt":"2018-08-11T17:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=372990"},"modified":"2018-08-11T22:40:08","modified_gmt":"2018-08-11T21:40:08","slug":"why-trump-cancelled-the-iran-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/why-trump-cancelled-the-iran-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Trump Cancelled the Iran Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The following is entirely from open online sources that I have been finding to be trustworthy on these matters in the past. These sources will be linked-to here; none of this information is secret, even though some details in my resulting analysis of it will be entirely new.<\/span><\/p>\n

It explains how and why the bottom-line difference between Donald Trump and Barack Obama, regarding U.S. national security policies, turns out to be their different respective estimations of the biggest danger threatening the maintenance of the U.S. dollar as the world\u2019s leading or reserve currency. This dollar-dominance has been the overriding foreign-policy concern for both Presidents.<\/b> Any \u2018news\u2019medium whose \u2018reporting\u2019 on the matter has missed that basic fact is either incompetent, corrupt (propagandistic), or both, but this essential fact will be shown here to explain both the similarities and the differences between Trump\u2019s and Obama\u2019s policies on Iran. \u2018Reporting\u2019 the surface (of policy on Iran or anything else) without disclosing what\u2019s underneath it, is merely spreading propaganda, not publishing actual journalism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama placed as being the top threat to the dollar, a breakaway of the EU (America\u2019s largest market both for exports and for imports) from alliance with the United States. He was internationally a Europhile. Trump, however, places as being the top threat to the dollar, a breakaway of Saudi Arabia and of the other Gulf Arab oil monarchies from the United States. Trump is internationally a Sunni-phile: specifically a protector of fundamentalist Sunni monarchs \u2014 but especially of the Sauds themselves<\/span><\/a> \u2014 and they hate Shia and especially the main Shia nation, Iran<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how that change, to Saudi Arabia as being America\u2019s main ally, has happened \u2014 actually it\u2019s a culmination of decades. Trump is merely the latest part of that process of change. Here is from the U.S. State Department\u2019s official historian<\/span><\/a>, regarding this history:<\/span><\/p>\n

By the 1960s, a surplus of U.S. dollars caused by foreign aid, military spending, and foreign investment threatened this system<\/i> [the FDR-established 1944 Bretton Woods gold-based U.S. dollar as the world\u2019s reserve currency<\/span><\/a>], as the United States did not have enough gold to cover the volume of dollars in worldwide circulation at the rate of $35 per ounce; as a result, the dollar was overvalued. Presidents\u00a0John F. Kennedy\u00a0and\u00a0Lyndon B. Johnson\u00a0adopted a series of measures to support the dollar and sustain Bretton Woods: foreign investment disincentives; restrictions on foreign lending; efforts to stem the official outflow of dollars; international monetary reform; and cooperation with other countries. Nothing worked. Meanwhile, traders in foreign exchange markets, believing that the dollar\u2019s overvaluation would one day compel the U.S. government to devalue it, proved increasingly inclined to sell dollars. This resulted in periodic runs on the dollar.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

It was just such a run on the dollar, along with mounting evidence that the overvalued dollar was undermining the nation\u2019s foreign trading position, which prompted President Richard M. Nixon to act, on August 13, 1971<\/i> [to end the convertibility of dollars to gold].<\/span><\/p>\n

When Nixon ended the gold-basis of the dollar<\/span><\/a> and then in 1974 secretly switched to the current oil-basis, this transformation of the dollar\u2019s backing, from gold to oil, was intended to enable the debt-financing (as opposed to the tax-financing, which is less acceptable to voters) of whatever military expenditure would be necessary in order to satisfy the profit-needs of Lockheed Corporation and of the other U.S. manufacturers whose only markets are the U.S. Government and its allied governments, as well as of U.S. extractive industries such as oil and mining firms, which rely heavily upon access to foreign natural resources, as well as of Wall Street and its need for selling debt and keeping interest-rates down (and stock-prices \u2014 and therefore aristocrats\u2019 wealth \u2014 high and rising). This 1974 secret agreement between Nixon and King Saud lasts to the present day, and has worked well for both aristocracies. It met the needs of the very same \u201cmilitary-industrial complex\u201d (the big U.S. Government contractors) that the prior Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, had warned might take control of U.S. foreign policies. As Bloomberg\u2019s Andrea Wong on 30 May 2016 explained the Nixon system that replaced the FDR system, \u201cThe basic framework was strikingly simple. The U.S. would buy oil from Saudi Arabia and provide the kingdom military aid and equipment. In return, the Saudis would plow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance America\u2019s spending.\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

This new system didn\u2019t only supply a constant flow of Saudi tax-money to the U.S. Government; it supplied a constant flow of new sales-orders and profits to the military firms that were increasingly coming to control the U.S. Government \u2014 for the benefit of both<\/i> aristocracies: the Sauds, and America\u2019s billionaires.<\/span><\/p>\n

That was near the end of the FDR-produced 37-year period of U.S. democratic leadership of the world, the era that had started at Bretton Woods in 1944. It came crashing to an end not in 1974 (which was step two after the 1971 step one had ended the 1944 system) but on the day when Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981. The shockingly sudden ascent, from that moment on, of U.S. federal Government debt (to be paid-off by future generations instead of by current taxpayers) is shown, right here, in a graph of \u201cU.S. Federal Debt as Percent of GDP, 1940-2015\u201d<\/span><\/a>, where you can see that the debt had peaked above 90% of GDP late in WW II between 1944-1948<\/b>, and then plunged during Bretton Woods, but in 1981 it started ascending yet again, until reaching that WW II peak for a second time, as it has been ever since 2010<\/b>, when Obama bailed-out the mega-banks and their mega-clients, but didn\u2019t bail out the American public, whose finances had been destroyed by those banksters\u2019 frauds, which Obama refused to prosecute; and, so, economic inequality in America got even more extreme after the 2008 George W. Bush crash, instead of less extreme afterward (as had always happened in the past). <\/span><\/p>\n

Above 90% debt\/GDP during and immediately following WW II was sound policy, but America\u2019s going again above 90% since 2010 has reflected simply an aristocratic heist of America, for only<\/i> the aristocracy\u2019s benefit \u2014 all of the benefits going only to the super-rich. <\/span><\/p>\n

Another, and more-current U.S. graph<\/a><\/span> shows that, as of the first quarter of 2018, this percentage (debt\/GDP) is, yet again, back now to its previous all-time record high of 105-120%%, which had been reached only in 1945-1947<\/b> (when it was justified by the war). <\/span><\/p>\n

Currently, companies such as Lockheed Martin are thriving as they had done during WW II, but the sheer corruption in America\u2019s military spending is this time the reason<\/b>, no World War (yet); so, this time, America is spending like in an all-out-war situation, even before the Congress has issued any declaration of war at all. Everybody except the American public knows that the intense corruptness of the U.S. military is the reason<\/span><\/a> for this restoration<\/i> of astronomical \u2018defense\u2019 spending, even during peace-time. A major poll even showed that \u2018defense\u2019 spending was the only spending by the federal Government which Americans in 2017 wanted increased; they wanted all other federal spending to be reduced<\/span><\/a> (though there was actually vastly more corruption in military spending than in any other type<\/span><\/a> \u2014 the public have simply been hoodwinked).<\/span><\/p>\n

But can the U.S. Government\u2019s extreme misallocation of wealth, from the public to the insiders, continue without turning this country into a much bigger version of today\u2019s Greece? More and more people around the world are worrying about that. Of course, Greece didn\u2019t have the world\u2019s reserve currency, but what would happen to the net worths of America\u2019s billionaires if billionaires worldwide were to lose faith in the dollar? Consequently, there\u2019s intensified Presidential worrying about how much longer foreign investors will continue to trust the oil-based dollar. <\/span><\/p>\n

America\u2019s political class now have two competing ideas to deal with this<\/b> danger, Obama\u2019s versus Trump\u2019s, both being about how to preserve the dollar in a way that best serves the needs of \u2018defense\u2019 contractors, extractive firms, and Wall Street. Obama chose Europe (America\u2019s largest market) as America\u2019s chief ally (he was Euro-centric against Russia); Trump chose the owner of Saudi Arabia (he\u2019s Saudi-Israeli centric against Iran) \u2014 that\u2019s the world\u2019s largest weapons-purchaser, as well as the world\u2019s largest producer of oil (as well as the largest lobbies).<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

The Saudi King owns Saudi Arabia, including the world\u2019s largest and most valuable oil company, Aramco, whose oil is the “sweetest\u201d \u2014 the least expensive to extract and refine \u2014 and is also the most abundant, in all of the world, and so he can sell petroleum at a profit even when his competitors cannot. Oil-prices that are so low as to cause economic losses for other oil companies, can still be generating profits \u2014 albeit lowered ones \u2014 for King Saud; and this is the reason why his decisions determine how much the global oil-spigot will be turned on, and how low the global oil-price will be, at any given time. He controls the value of the U.S. dollar. He controls it far more directly, and far more effectively, than the EU can. It would be like, under the old FDR-era Bretton Woods system, controlling the exchange-rates of the dollar, by raising or lowering the amount of gold produced. But this is liquid gold, and King Saud determines its price.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, King Saud also leads the Gulf Cooperation Council of all other Arab oil monarchs, such as those who own UAE \u2014 all of them are likewise U.S. allies and major weapons-buyers. <\/span><\/p>\n

In an extraordinarily fine recent article by Pepe Escobar at Asia Times, \u201cOil and gas geopolitics: no shelter from the storm\u201d<\/span><\/a>, he quotes from his not-for-attribution interviews with \u201cEU diplomats,\u201d and reports:<\/span><\/p>\n

After the Trump administration\u2019s unilateral pull-out from the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), European Union diplomats in Brussels, off the record, and still in shock, admit that they blundered by not \u201cconfiguring the eurozone as distinct and separate to the dollar hegemony\u201d. Now they may be made to pay the price of their impotence via their \u201coutlawed\u201d trade with Iran. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

As admitted, never on the record, by experts in Brussels; the EU has got to reevaluate its strategic alliance with an essentially energy independent US, as \u201cwe are risking all our energy resources over their Halford Mackinder geopolitical analysis that they must break up <\/i>[the alliance between] Russia and China.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a direct reference to the late Mackinder epigone Zbigniew \u201cGrand Chessboard\u201d Brzezinski, who died dreaming of turning China against Russia.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In Brussels, there\u2019s increased recognition that US pressure on Iran, Russia and China is out of geopolitical fear the entire Eurasian land mass, organized as a super-trading bloc via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), <\/i>[and] the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), is slipping away from Washington\u2019s influence.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

This analysis gets closer to how the three key nodes of 21st century Eurasia integration \u2013 Russia, China and Iran \u2013 have identified the key issue; both the euro and the yuan must bypass the petrodollar, the ideal means, as the Chinese stress, to \u201cend the oscillation between strong and weak dollar cycles, which has been so profitable for US financial institutions, but lethal to emerging markets.\u201d \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s also no secret among Persian Gulf traders that in the \u2013 hopefully unlikely \u2013 event of a US-Saudi-Israeli war in Southwest Asia against Iran, a real scenario war-gamed by the Pentagon would be \u201cthe destruction of oil wells in the GCC <\/i>[Gulf Cooperation Council]. The Strait of Hormuz does not have to be blocked, as destroying the oil wells would be far more effective.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

And what the potential loss of over 20% of the world\u2019s oil supply would mean is terrifying; the implosion, with unforeseen consequences, of the quadrillion derivatives pyramid, and consequentially <\/i>[consequently] of the entire Western financial casino superstructure.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In other words: it\u2019s not the \u2018threat\u2019 that perhaps, some day, Iran will have nuclear warheads, that is actually driving Trump\u2019s concern here (despite what Israel\u2019s concerns are about that matter), but instead, it is his concerns about Iran\u2019s missiles, which constitute the delivery-system<\/i> for any<\/i> Iranian warheads: that their flight-range be short enough so that the Sauds will be outside their range<\/b><\/span><\/a>. (The main way Iran intends to respond to an invasion backed by the U.S., is to attack Saudi Arabia \u2014 Iran\u2019s leaders know that the U.S. Government is more dependent upon the Sauds than upon Israel \u2014 so, Iran\u2019s top targets would be Saudi capital Riyadh, and also the Ghawar oil field, which holds over half of Saudi oil. If U.S. bases have been used in the invasion, then all U.S. bases in the Middle East are also be within the range of Iran\u2019s missiles<\/span><\/a> and therefore would also probably be targeted.) <\/span><\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s deal with Iran had focused solely<\/i> upon preventing Iran from developing nuclear warheads<\/i> \u2014 which Obama perhaps thought (mistakenly) would dampen Israel\u2019s (and its billionaire U.S. financial backers\u2019) ardor for the U.S. to conquer Iran. Israel had publicly said that their concern was Iran\u2019s possibility to become a nuclear<\/i> power like Israel became; those possible future warheads were supposed to be the issue; but, apparently, that wasn\u2019t actually the issue which really drove Israel. Obama seems to have thought that it was, but it wasn\u2019t, actually. Israel, like the Sauds, want Iran conquered. Simple. The nuclear matter was more an excuse than an explanation.<\/span><\/p>\n

With Trump now in the White House, overwhelmingly by money from the Israel lobbies (proxies also for the Sauds) \u2014 and with no equivalently organized Jewish opposition<\/i> to the pro<\/i>-Israel lobbies (and so in the United States, for a person to be anti-Israel is viewed as being anti-Semitic, which is not at all true, but Israel\u2019s lies say<\/i> it\u2019s true and many Americans unfortunately believe it) \u2014 Trump has not only the Sauds and their allies requiring him to be against Iran and its allies, but he has also got this pressure coming from Israel: both the Big-Oil and the Jewish lobbies drive him. Unlike Obama, who wasn\u2019t as indebted to the Jewish lobbies, Trump needs to walk the plank for both the Sauds and Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words: Trump aims to keep the dollar as the reserve currency by suppressing not only China but also the two main competitors of King Saud: Iran and Russia. That\u2019s why America\u2019s main \u2018enemies\u2019 now are those three countries and their respective allies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama was likewise targeting them, but in a different priority-order<\/i><\/b>, with Russia being the main one (thus Obama\u2019s takeover of Ukraine in February 2014 turning it against Russia, next door<\/span><\/a>); and that difference was due to Obama\u2019s desire to be favorably viewed by the residents in America\u2019s biggest export and import market, the EU, and so his bringing another member (Ukraine) into the EU (which still hasn\u2019t yet been culminated).<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump is instead building on his alliance with King Saud and the other GCC monarchs, a group who can more directly cooperate to control the value of the U.S. dollar than the EU can. Furthermore, both conservative (including Orthodox) Jews in the United States, and also white evangelical Protestants in the U.S., are strongly supportive of Israel, which likewise sides with the Arab oil monarchs against Iran and its allies. Trump needs these people\u2019s votes. <\/span><\/p>\n

Trump also sides with the Sauds against Canada.<\/a><\/span> That\u2019s a matter which the theorists who assert that Israel controls the U.S., instead of that the Sauds (allied with America\u2019s and Israel\u2019s billionaires) control the U.S., ignore; they ignore whatever doesn\u2019t fit their theory. Of course, a lot doesn\u2019t fit their theory (which equates \u201cJews\u201d with \u201cIsraelis\u201d and alleges that \u201cthey\u201d control the world), but people whose prejudices are that deep-seated, can\u2019t be reached by any facts which contradict their self-defining prejudice. Since it defines themselves, it\u2019s a part of them, and they can never deny it, because to do so would be to deny who and what they are, and they refuse to change that. The Sauds control the dollar; Israel does not, but Israel does the lobbying, and both the Sauds and Israel want Iran destroyed. Trump gets this pressure not only from the billionaires but from his voters. <\/span><\/p>\n

And, of course, Democratic Party billionaires push the narrative that Russia controls America. It used to be the Republican Joseph R. McCarthy\u2019s accusation, that the \u201ccommies\u201d had \u201cinfiltrated\u201d<\/span><\/a>, especially at the State Department<\/span><\/a>. So: Trump kicked out Russia\u2019s diplomats, to satisfy those neocons<\/span><\/a> \u2014 the neoconservatives of all Parties and persuasions, both conservative and liberal.<\/span><\/p>\n

To satisfy the Sauds, despite the EU, Trump has dumped the Iran deal.<\/b> And he did it also to satisfy Israel, the main U.S. lobbyists for the Sauds. (Americans are far more sympathetic to Jews than to Arabs; the Sauds are aware of this; Israel handles their front-office.) For Trump, the Sauds are higher priority than Europe; even Israel (who are an expense instead of a moneybag for the U.S. Government) are higher priority than Europe. Both the Sauds and Israel together are vastly higher. And the Sauds alone are higher priority for Trump than are even Canada and Europe combined<\/i>. Under Trump, anything will be done in order to keep the Sauds and their proxy-lobbyists (Israel)<\/span><\/a> \u2018on America\u2019s side\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Consequently, Trump\u2019s political base is mainly against Iran and for Israel, but Obama\u2019s was mainly against Russia and for the EU. Obama\u2019s Democratic Party still are controlled by the same billionaires as before; and, so, Democrats continue demonizing Russia, and are trying to make as impossible as they can, any rapprochement with Russia \u2014 and, therefore, they smear Trump for anything he might try to do along those lines.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both Obama and Trump have been aiming to extend America\u2019s aristocracy\u2019s dominance around the world, but they employ different strategies toward that politically bipartisan American-aristocratic objective: the U.S. Government\u2019s global control, for the benefit of the U.S. aristocracy, at everyone else\u2019s expense. Obama and Trump were placed into the White House by different groups of U.S. billionaires, and each nominee serves his\/her respective sponsors<\/span><\/a>, no public anywhere \u2014 not even their voters\u2019 welfare.<\/span><\/p>\n

An analogous example is that, whereas<\/span><\/a> Fox News, Forbes, National Review, The Weekly Standard, American Spectator, Wall Street Journal<\/i>, Investors Business Daily<\/i>, Breitbart News, InfoWars, Reuters, and AP, are propagandists for the Republican Party<\/b>; NPR, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, Mother Jones, The Atlantic, The New Republic, New Yorker, New York Magazine, New York Times, Washington Post<\/i>, USA Today<\/i>, Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, and Salon, are propagandists for the Democratic Party<\/b>; but, they all <\/b>draw their chief sponsors from the same small list of donors who are America\u2019s billionaires, since these few people control the top advertisers, investors, and charities, and thus control nearly all of the nation\u2019s propaganda. The same people who control the Government control the public; but, America isn\u2019t a one-Party dictatorship. America is, instead, a multi-Party dictatorship<\/span><\/a>. And this<\/span><\/a> is how it functions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump cancelled the Iran deal because a different group of billionaires are now in control of the White House, and of the rest of the U.S. Government. Trump\u2019s group demonize especially Iran; Obama\u2019s group demonize especially Russia. That\u2019s it, short. That\u2019s America\u2019s aristocratic tug-of-war; but both sides of it are for<\/i> invasion, and for<\/i> war.\u00a0 <\/span>Thus, we\u2019re in the condition of \u2018permanent war for permanent peace\u2019 \u2014 to satisfy the military contractors and the billionaires who control them. Any U.S. President who would resist that, would invite assassination; but, perhaps in Trump\u2019s case, impeachment, or other removal-from-office, would be likelier. In any case, the sponsors need to be satisfied \u2014 or else \u2014 and Trump knows this.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump is doing what he thinks he has to be doing, for his own safety. He\u2019s just a figurehead for a different faction of the U.S. aristocracy<\/b>, than Obama was. He\u2019s doing what he thinks he needs to be doing, for his survival. Political leadership is an extremely dangerous business. Trump is playing a slightly different game of it than Obama did, because he represents a different faction than Obama did. These two factions of the U.S. aristocracy are also now battling each other for political control over Europe<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org The following is entirely from open online sources that I have been finding to be trustworthy on these matters in the past. These sources will be linked-to here; none of this information is secret, even though some details in my resulting analysis of it will be entirely new. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":372991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,519],"tags":[115,30,96,3604,93,535,67,59,524,987,20344,754,92,523],"class_list":{"0":"post-372990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-newswire","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-eu","14":"tag-global-news","15":"tag-israel","16":"tag-military","17":"tag-russia","18":"tag-russia-today","19":"tag-sauds","20":"tag-syria","21":"tag-terrorism","22":"tag-ukraine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372990"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":373005,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372990\/revisions\/373005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}