The conflict around Iran has largely been dominating the world politics over the past several years. Citing the mythical "threat to the international community", the US is trying to disallow the Iranian access to nuclear technologies, though the interest of other countries – Israel, Pakistan, India, or the relatively minor threshold states – in civilian and military nuclear technology doesn't seem to evoke the same worries in Washington. It must be understood that the reason behind the paradox which may any moment escalate into armed hostilities is Iran's centrality to Eurasian security. The state of the global economy which becomes increasingly sensitive to the developments in the energy sector will depend directly on how the conflict between the U.S. and Iran is resolved.
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The entire logic of contemporary international relations is built on the U.S. primacy, which, as a result, has to be continuously confirmed. The U.S. elites – both democratic and republican – believe in military force as the best foreign policy their country can pursue. The tendency, in particular, manifests itself in the efforts to carve out of the existing global configuration, regardless of established national borders, the Greater the Middle East that would function as a gigantic U.S. base in Eurasia. Once the objective is accomplished, Washington will both gain control over the energy pricing on the international market and be able to talk in an unprecedentedly strong language to such Eurasian heavyweights as China, India, and Russia.
Iran plays a key role in the Middle Eastern security due to its strategic location, impressive natural resources, access to oceanic freight routes, and the potential to integrate a large number of overland avenues into a transit network would emerge as the backbone of the Eurasian common economic space. Regime change in Tehran, a dream shared by many in Washington, and the return of Iran to the US orbit would create an extremely complex situation for the above three Eurasian powers and give the US considerable advantages over the Russia-China-India triangle. Iran happens to be "the fourth pillar" of Eurasia's strategic balance, which automatically means that shielding the country from the US pressure has to be a priority for Moscow and Beijing.
The loud US expressions of concern that Iran may become a nuclear-armed country leave an impression of a campaign meant to sway the global public opinion in favor of an offensive against it. Let us imagine for a moment that, indeed, Iran manages to develop an arsenal comprising several nuclear munitions. It is clear that under the circumstances Israel would be the only realistic target, but, given the unquestionable character of the US-Israeli partnership, attacking Israel would immediately expose Iran to the US nuclear strike turning the whole country into a total Chernobyl. Considering that Washington is unperturbed vis-a-vis China whose nuclear potential far exceeds anything Iran can hope to acquire, the talk of constant nuclear peril from emanating from the latter can hardly be taken at face value.
Since suicide is not what Tehran is after, it is clear that Iran's hypothetical nukes would not be a first-strike weapon. Rather, the modestly proportioned stockpile would serve to guarantee that the country stays safe and, furthermore, would be used as a foreign-policy instrument. That alone may explain Washington's reasoning on the issue – Iran's ascension to a nuclear status would mark a serious geopolitical defeat for the US and convincingly prove the viability of the multipolar world. The multipolarity, in turn, overrides the US primacy and highlights the shakiness of the arrangement under which the US military-industrial complex enables the US to be a hyperpower and the US dollar – the international reserve currency. The present-day US economy propped up by untamed borrowings on the international financial market has no chance to survive the waning of the US global leadership and, once it is gone, the US would immediately sink to the status of another Australia.
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Contrary to a widespread perception, it may be true that the US deliberately prevents the current sky-high oil prices from landing. In the past, Washington coined the myth of loads of WMD at Iraq's disposal, but the actual motivation behind the offensive against Iraq only in part could be to get a grip on the country's oil reserves – it had to be understood in Washington that the opening of the Iraqi campaign would imminently send the oil prices upwards. High energy costs weight on the economies of the countries having no domestic oil production, which is not the case in the US, the country holding a line in the list of the world's top five in terms of the oil output. Simply, in contrast to the majority of oil-rich countries, the US does not export its oil but diverts it towards domestic needs. In other words, the wild oil prices are hurting the economies of the EU, China, and India, all of them being rivals to the immune US.
The US military-political control over Iraq, the tailoring of the expanses of Eurasia in line with the Greater Middle East design, and the plan to subdue Iran are steps towards the same goal, namely that of cutting China and India off the necessary energy supplies. The strategy is reminiscent of what the Anglo-Saxons did in the colonial epoch when European countries acquired colonial imports exclusively via the global reseller known as the British monarchy.
US oil companies whose interests are a holy cow to any US president play in the world's exquisite energy league. While, over the past years, Russia enjoyed exceptional oil revenues, so did the US. The US economy being chronically overheated, it constantly has to find ways to accommodate the excessive cash flows, which is best done by feeding them to the military-industrial complex with its notoriously high costs in the framework of an aggressive foreign-policy strategy.
Sustaining a combat-ready army and a chain of bases worldwide, combined with regular launches of military campaigns, also helps to absorb the financial “surpluses”. To that end, these days the US only has to declare that a particular country is the scene of an unfolding conflict, as we have seen during the so-called Arab Spring. No doubt, the exorbitant research projects implemented within the military-industrial complex largely serve the same purpose.
Strong domestic oil industry and the high energy prices on the global market altogether facilitate the US march towards technological superiority over competitors. Down the road, the strategy should propel the US to a novel technological formation, the benefits including uncontested leadership in the armaments sphere.
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The US is equally comfortable with the present-day outrageous oil prices and the prospects of a new conflict that would give them another boost as, while the energy demand is steadily growing, China would have to negotiate about its fuel import with Washington, not Tehran. It should be taken into account in the context that the energy prices are driven not only by the resources depletion that looms on the horizon but also by the economic rise of countries like China, India, and Brazil (and, occasionally, Russia) which typically post 7-10% annual economic growth. It must be a pain to Washington that the growth nevertheless continues and the health of the US economy is in fact deteriorating. The housing crisis, for example, caused the evaporation of only around $500b, which only amounted to a fraction of the global financial bubble hanging over the US and Great Britain but still had profound repercussions for the Anglo-Saxon world's financial system and institutions which the rest of the world and much of the domestic population no longer trust. The housing crisis also exposed serious weaknesses of the real estate sector, the key one in the US and British economies. The net worth of Great Britain, so far a fairly comfortable country to live in, is 70% real estate. The lesson taught by the crisis was that the people in the US and Great Britain are obviously living beyond their means.
Foreign investors are aware that these days – as the damages are expressed in tens of billions of dollars – the US and British banks covered them from their own funds. What the investors have to realize at the same time is that when the damages scale reaches hundreds of billions of dollars, whatever guarantees would stop to make sense. Consequently, the wise approach to investing is to make sure that the money can under any circumstances be retracted, which takes directly buying into Western banks, investment joints, and retirement funds. This is the reason why, at the moment, admitting non-Western buyers to the West's assets is a politically hot theme – Chinese, Russian, Arab, and Indian investors are knocking on the Western companies doors, but those remain shut. The West thus violates its own rules of the game which call for openness, unobstructed capital flows, etc., but actually it has no choice since the stakeholders to whom the Western governments cannot dictate will act according to the market customs when a crisis erupts and withdraw funds from the bankrupt economies. If the non-Western business massively bites into the West's financial assets, the West will have to forget about shifting the burden of its crisis to others and have to face their consequences on unprivileged terms.
Economic growth translates quickly into an essentially new global disposition, and Washington is mindful of the risk that its technological breakthrough will not be achieved by 2020. The US has overlooked the strengthening of Russia, China, and India and is likely afraid to make the same mistake in dealing with Iran.
