Trump’s Iran Sanctions

Anglo-Zionists may win the first trade battle but will lose the war

Kevin Barrett

Safar 23, 1440 2018-11-01

News & Analysis

by Kevin Barrett (News & Analysis, Crescent International Vol. 47, No. 9, Safar, 1440)

Will Donald Trump’s Zionist-orchestrated trade sanctions against Iran work? That question was hotly debated at a conference entitled “Jeru-salem/al-Quds, the Eternal Capital of Palestine,” held May 12 and 13, 2018 in Mashhad, Iran, sponsored by the New Horizons NGO, and featuring dozens of the world’s leading independent thinkers.

Why would a Palestine conference include discussions of Iran sanctions? The answer, of course, is that Iran is the last major state supporter of the Palestinian resistance. Trump’s anti-Iran policy is driven almost entirely by Likud Zionists, who inserted the orange-haired buffoon in the White House to reverse Barack Obama’s anti-Likud policies, including the JCPOA (aka the Iran nuclear deal).

Jared Kushner, Trump’s kosher nostra son-in-law, has been charged with overseeing what Likud hopes will be the irreversible surrender of the Palestinian people to Zionist genocide. Kushner has enlisted the Saudis and Emiratis in his “final solution to the Palestine problem.” Egyptian Pharaoh, ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi’s blood-soaked Zionist-occupied Egypt is also on board. Iraq, Libya, and Syria, all weakened by 9/11-triggered Zionist wars of annihilation, are in no position to lead the resistance. Turkey and its ally Qatar have not yet freed themselves from NATO occupation and therefore enjoy only limited capacities to support anti-Zionist resistance. The only state that proudly and forcefully stands by the Palestinians as they refuse to surrender is Iran. That is why the Likudniks are so obsessed with plotting against the Islamic Republic. The lynchpin of their plot is trade sanctions, which they hope will undermine Islamic Iran economically and lead to “regime change”: a Zionist-sponsored coup d’état aimed at undoing the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The two-phase sanctions reach their peak in early-November 2018. It seems likely that they will significantly damage Iran’s economy, at least in the short run. For even though European political leaders despise Trump, support the JCPOA, and have attempted to legislate an end run around the sanctions, the biggest European companies are slashing trade with Tehran for fear of alienating the US and losing more money than they could earn in Iran. The hasty exit of those big European corporations will undoubtedly inflict temporary pain on Iran’s economy.

But despite the Eurocentric delusions of a dying empire, the US and Europe are not the whole world. Russia, China, and an increasingly independent Turkey are more motivated than their EU counterparts to evade US sanctions and pick up the slack in Tehran’s global trade. Most nations outside the US and Europe have no use for anti-Iran sanctions and are less vulnerable to them than the Europeans are. Indeed, many countries including Russia and China have been targeted by US sanctions themselves! These states have every reason to undermine the dollar as the global reserve currency and create a new multi-polar currency system that would no longer allow a single power, the Zionist-occupied United States, to unilaterally impose sanctions on any state that resists its bullying.

China, the world manufacturing behemoth, was hit by $60 billion worth of US trade sanctions last May, setting off a smoldering trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. And the US has been imposing even more significant travel bans, asset freezes, and trade restrictions against Russia since 2014. According to Bloomberg, “some top Russian state banks and companies, including oil and gas giants, are effectively barred from getting financing through US banks and markets.” And according to Pepe Escobar (Asia Times, October 18, 2018), “Magnitsky-style sanctioning of Russian individuals and businesses may soon be extended to the Chinese.”

And then there is Turkey, where US imposed sanctions, including steeply increased steel and aluminum tariffs, have been in place since August 2018. Ankara has reacted by rebuking the US, hitting Washington with retaliatory sanctions, moving ever closer to Russia, and announcing that it will openly defy Trump’s anti-Iran sanctions. Even Turkey’s long history of security cooperation with the US and NATO is in question; Erdogan has called US sanctions “a stab in the back,” and Turkey is standing by its purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system.

So it seems clear that much of the world will dedicate itself to undermining Trump’s Iran sanctions. The immediate result will be a gradual increase in Iran’s ability to trade with the world despite the sanctions. And the medium- or long-term consequences for US dollar hegemony, and the US empire it props up, could be devastating.

In the past, only alternative media discussed the possible joined-at-the-hip demise of the US dollar and US empire. Outlets like GlobalResearch.ca, VeteransToday.com, and LegitGov.org openly discussed the fact that US wars and regime change operations target not only opponents of Zionism, but also nations that try to undermine (Zionist-banker-dominated) petrodollar hegemony and the Western-dominated currency system. For example, WikiLeaked emails show Hillary Clinton admitted that the real reason for overthrowing al-Qadhdhafi and destroying Libya was not “human rights” but al-Qadhdhafi’s gold dinar and the threat it posed to Western currency hegemony.

Today, mainstream sources are openly worrying that Trump’s chaotic sanctions could lead to the demise of the dollar system. One example is OilPrice.com’s article “Iran Sanctions Are Damaging the Dollar” published September 18, 2018. The author, Nick Cunningham, admits that the sanctions are indeed reducing Iran’s exports. But he cautions that “we are only in the first few chapters of what may ultimately be a long story that ends with the erosion of the power of the US dollar.”

Cunningham points out that an estimated 88% of all global exchanges are conducted in dollars, thereby massively inflating demand for the greenback. This high demand for dollars allows the US to print vast quantities of essentially worthless green paper and its digital equivalent — and trade it for valuable goods and services.

It is widely acknowledged that without the ability to create trillions of dollars of real value out of nothing, the US empire could not possibly pay for its bloated military, its occupation of the world via 900 military bases in at least 70 countries, and its roughly $7 trillion worth of wars aimed at destroying Zionist Israel’s adversaries.

Cunningham argues that the Iran sanctions are by far the biggest threat to dollar hegemony. He predicts that a long list of countries — essentially the whole world minus the USA and its Anglo-Saxon stooges — will devote themselves to developing workarounds enabling them to evade the sanctions and trade with Iran. Though none of these workarounds will likely by itself prove a game changer, Cunningham argues, the cumulative effect will be an irreversible decline in Washington’s global financial dominance.

So Iran will continue to suffer — but that suffering should gradually ease. As the Qur’an assured the Prophet of Islam (pbuh) and simultaneously assures all of the righteous, “Fa-inna ma‘ al-‘usri yusra, inna ma‘ al-‘usri yusra: And, behold, with every hardship comes ease; verily, with every hardship comes ease!” (105:5–6).

As the economic pain creates potential unrest, and Zionist propaganda targets the young and vulnerable, Islamic Iran will have to find effective ways to rally its population for the long-term struggle in which it enjoys a strategic advantage… and will, insha’ Allah, emerge victorious.