I don't know why really, but I feel almost certain that the people in power would never actually do anything so stupid as to attack Iran. Our government instead plays its thug card, playing chicken, doing everything possible short of war with Iran.
Wait, I understand that my opinion might, at first glance, appear to be overly optimistic except, I'm trying to look at the issue from the big business point of view, not to mention the humanitarian costs or economic costs. To study the United States involvement in the Persian Gulf the scenarios can become very frightening, very quickly.
Stop for just a moment and imagine just how your life would be instantly changed, if the United States were to attack Iran and Iran were to respond in kind. A World War on top of the world's energy sector, Macho games and bravado aside, a situation like this would create world condition's, which would amount to a near economic Armageddon. The price of oil and gold would skyrocket, seven or eight dollars a gallon gas would quickly become possible.
An attack on Iran would create a worldwide energy panic and an energy shock. The already pilfered and manhandled Western consumer economies would quickly collapse stripped of any purchasing power. The American economy already anemic would quickly turn septic.
We have witnessed recently the response of the Afghani people to the burning of a Koran, stop for a minute and imagine the response across the Islamic world to an unprovoked attack on Iran by the United States or Israel. Imagine the response of the nations of India and Turkey to an American attack bordering their frontiers. It is pivotal moment in world affairs.
Such an attack would force the hand of politicians in Moscow and Beijing to respond with their own face saving measures. In no case could they remain silent, this is a case for these nations of political survival. The United States in the face of crumbling international economic prowess begins a ten-year policy of bellicose military adventurism.
These nations affiliated by geography cannot continue to ignore the American war juggernaut. This is and would be a gambit with no upside possible, as Iran is not Iraq. Iran is a large country and the US and Israel would be biting off more than they or we could chew in an asymmetrical war. Arab Spring could easily be erased by a Summer of Arab rage. American NGO employees were recently arrested in Egypt and others hide in the US embassy accused of funneling money to rebel groups and the provisional military government of Egypt is having none of it.
The world has had enough of American Lebensraum and the Arab world has had more than enough of it. They chaff under the tyranny of the house of Saud and the lackey Emirates. Sitting right across the waterway a delicate Iraq, a volatile Afghanistan, Lebanon and Syria not to mention the West bank and Gaza all with Iran as the tipping point. Turkey has rocky relations with Israel while Pakistan has rocky relations with the US. The US military has bisected Iran much like the wehrmacht had bisected Czechoslovakia in 1938, only this isn't 1938 and the world economy would never stand the strain.
The European Union bailout of Greece would become impossible. Turkey is right next door to Greece, which leads directly into the heart of continental Europe.This region and areas connected to the region weave a delicate tapestry of ethnic religious, economic differences. The dominos could fall in so many ways that you couldn't possible determine where this could all lead too, a nightmare scenario of a region where America might win militarily in Iran, but then it could all go so dangerously and disastrously wrong.
The Arab states of the Persian Gulf resemble pre- World War One Europe, crumbling alliances of a failing Empires with Russia on the border. Tired Monarchies, young revolutions shifting sands, say for instance, the US attacked Iran and the Pakistani government supported the US. Pakistani citizens would riot, Afghanistan would be impossible to predict. There would be trouble in Gaza and the West Bank. Now look at it like this way, suppose the US attacks and the Pakistani government condemns the move and closes its air space and refuses to allow the US offload all of the military supplies needed for Afghanistan to transit through Pakistan?.
Rather than a bloated military the European Allies have lean militaries and the conflict in Libya has depleted their munitions stocks. The US could find itself as the Kaiser's Germany, with everything to lose and nothing to gain. The big power on the block supported by a host of Allies who have little to offer except for cheers and good tidings, it is the parable of the ant and the Elephant, which says the greatest elephant, can be overcome by ten million ants.
How oh how, could the United States ever hope to administer such a Post war Iran? Explain to me to me just how a war with the people of Iran will in any way change the mind of the Iranian populace about the United States? Would the US government care to stand on its record of nation building experience in Iraq and Afghanistan? Iran is a huge country nearly the size of Alaska and Iran has a population two and a half times larger than Afghanistan.
Would anyone like to wager a guess on, who Iran's largest trading partner might be? If you guessed China, you'd be right. So when they write about oil disruptions in the newspapers ask yourself whose oil disruption? That would be a Chinese oil disruption and I doubt seriously if the Chinese would take any too kindly to the United States disrupting its flow of oil and possibly causing the long feared bursting of the Chinese economic bubble.
The Chinese economy is a super bubble, with more than ten years of unbridled, double-digit growth. It has a boomtown mentality where only the brave speak of controlling growth. This is at the root of the problem of austerity in Greece and elsewhere in Europe. The Chinese boomtown economy has acted like a sponge upon world capital, come one come all, get it while you can, the profits from investment in China yields three times the profit of investments made in Europe or the US, so where do the bankers choose to go?
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