The Continuing Pressure on Iran

As I write, vast naval armadas are off the coast of Iran. The Straits of Hormuz are in theory subject to the International Convention on the Law of the Sea and its provisions about the extent of coastal waters, but this has not been tested--yet. The United States has taken a position in which it seeks, through straining muscles cramped by financial crisis, to pressurise the murderous government of the Islamic republic.

At a time when oil prices are falling, and Iranian treasury revenues are consequently declining, when inflation is rising, and when Teheran's middle class is growing, hardliners yet have hope that they can unite their nation around an outside threat. Precious little else these days would. Persia and all the other nations within that country are easily inside one of the most fissile of those states which seek to contain the disparate remnants of millennial Empires. Have a look at these headlines on 'Iran Daily' or the 'Tehran Times'--and read between the lines. There are more subtle and less dangerous ways to undermine the Ayatollah.

It is odd--I think that the oil price has fallen because of the recession we are in. But it is not falling back to levels it was at when oil was abundant and economies were growing. If an oil price decline puts paid to new projects to extract oil, at a time when oil supplies are falling and when peak flow rates have been passed, what is going to happen if and when we climb out of recession? We in the west must make an effort to build up nuclear power, solar renewables, and clean coal plants, and to develop nuclear fusion now--that's the real Middle Eastern nuclear question.

We have our hardliners too, however. They still hanker after quick victories. Glenn Greenwald, over at Salon.com, has already written on this point today, and I have written on it many times before. Europeans have every right to dread the thought of a Persian war.

Today, two conservative former American senators are beating the drum for a decade-long and devastating commitment to run missiles into the sand, and more importantly, to borrow money from the Chinese, stick it in buckets of Marine and Army blood, attach it to bombs, and drop it on Iranian schools. This will somehow convince the leaders of that country to behave.

I hope to God they are just playing bad cop. The alternative--that anyone could be willing to bring on the sort of Armageddon-style assault that an attack on Iran would represent, and that they could dare to call themselves free men if they did so, is chilling to me. Freedom is about more than using great power to destroy the world, end worlds by killing, and maim.

Find any soldier you know and ask them. War is madness. This is law.