Israel

According to a recent CNN poll, 60% of Americans want go to war with Iran to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons. This in spite of the fact that the US intelligence community is fairy unanimous that Iran is not even currently pursuing nuclear weapons. Simultaneously 71% of Americans — in total contradiction to the evidence recognised by both the CIA and Mossad that Iran is not currently even developing a nuclear weapon — believe that Iran currently has nuclear weapons. Unlike the 71%, I’m not really convinced by this — if anything, it could be Iranian disinformation to try and avoid an American or Israeli attack. More importantly, the US and Israeli intelligence community at large don’t buy it. If they had any real evidence that Iran had a bomb today, Netanyahu would have been presenting it at the UN instead of drawing red lines on Wile E. Coyote bomb diagrams.

A long period of economic mediocrity is the most likely outcome.

Here’s some context behind the claims that Iran will imminently possess a nuclear weapon.

Israel Versus Iran: What’s REALLY Going On …

Iran is not blameless, and continues to provoke Israel through its support for Hamas and Hezbollah and through eliminationist rhetoric. But given the level of provocation from the Israeli and American side, it is astonishing that Iran remains free of nuclear weapons. Yet it is a fact that Iran is not armed with nuclear weapons, and it remains a fact that Iran has not attacked nor occupied any foreign lands since World War 2. Iran is not an expansionistic country. As neocon provocateur Patrick Clawson essentially admitted in advocating for a false flag attack to get America to war, Iran is not likely to attack either the United States or Israel. So when it comes to drawing red lines, we in the West would do well to draw a red line around our behaviour — because right now, we in the West are the ones who are stirring up trouble by threatening to strike first.

The US takes... and China makes. With the Western world doing all it can to cripple the Iranian regime with embargo after embargo, desperate to provoke the country into an offensive move that would be promptly retaliated as a move of "liberation", Iran, which in a few short months has achieved just what all the Western central banks have been desperate to do and see its currency collapse to record lows, continues to find eager allies in the unlikeliest of places. Namely China, which today delivered the first of 12 crudesupertankers to Iran " giving Tehran extra capacity to transport its oil to Asia as it struggles against Western sanctions, but it is unclear if the ship has the permits necessary to call at global ports." What is most amusing is the glaring override of the western isolation of Iran by China, which together with India and Russia, have now become critical trading and strategic partners of Iran, a consideration which any offensive moves by Israel or the US will most likely need to factor in.

Will Israel Launch a False Flag Against Iran to Start War?

They All Share One Thing ...

The first concern of the Emir of Qatar is the prosperity and security of the tiny kingdom.  To achieve that, he knows no limits. Stuck between Iran and Saudi Arabia is Qatar with the third largest natural gas deposit in the world.  The gas gives the nearly quarter of a million Qatari citizens the highest per capita income on the planet and provides 70 percent of government revenue.  How does an extremely wealthy midget with two potentially dangerous neighbors keep them from making an unwelcomed visit?  Naturally, you have someone bigger and tougher to protect you. Of course, nothing is free.  The price has been to allow the United States to have two military bases in a strategic location.  According to Wikileak diplomatic cables, the Qataris are even paying sixty percent of the costs. Having tanks and bunker busting bombs nearby will discourage military aggression, but it does nothing to curb the social tumult that has been bubbling for decades in the Middle Eastern societies.  Eighty-four years ago, the Moslem Brotherhood arose in Egypt because of the presence of foreign domination by Great Britain and the discontent of millions of the teaming masses yearning to be free.  Eighty-four years later, the teaming masses are still yearning. 

Liquidity, Fund Flows and Technicals matter now. Fundamentals, Dow Theory and the real economy, not so much. 

Ahmadinejad may well be playing the same long game as Osama bin Laden:

We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.

Osama bin Laden

And they may succeed (although those who believe that war is a stimulus that can end a depression will surely disagree — as Antal Fekete has noted, Western governments may look to a new hot war in the middle east as an opportunity to exit an economic depression that they cannot control).  But for Ahmadinejad and Iran, it may come at a huge, huge cost — a long painful invasion, ending in death in the street or on the gallows. Neoconservatism — and Obama and Romney are both to lesser and greater degrees neoconservatives — is a violent utopian ideology that seeks to force the entire world — by whatever means and at any cost — to conform to American foreign policy imperatives. As America should have learned a long time ago — and as Ahmadinejad may well soon learn — needlessly pissing off violent utopian ideologues creates blowback.

Curious what geopolitical developments traders are looking at? Here is a complete summary, in under 30 seconds, courtesy of the Chairman of the Fermentation committee.

It seems you can't turn your back on the Middle East for more than a few minutes without something going bump in the desert. Sure enough, a few shorts hours after we reported that the leader of Iran's Revolutionary Guards is certain war with Israel is coming, here comes Iran again with the stunning admission that none other than German industrial conglomerate, and occasional maker of nuclear power plants, Siemens was reponsible for "implanting tiny explosives inside equipment the Islamic Republic purchased for its disputed nuclear program. Prominent lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujerdi said Iranian security experts discovered the explosives and removed them before detonation, adding that authorities believe the booby-trapped equipment was sold to derail uranium enrichment efforts. "The equipment was supposed to explode after being put to work, in order to dismantle all our systems," he said. "But the wisdom of our experts thwarted the enemy conspiracy." Expert wisdom aside, what is stunning is not the ongoing attempts by everyone and the kitchen sink to terminally corrupt the Iranian nuclear power plant: after Stuxnet one would expect nothing less than every form of conventional and "new normal" espionage thrown into the pot to cripple the only peaceful argument Iran would have for demanding nuclear power, which by implication would mean that all ongoing nuclear pursuits are geared solely toward aggressive, military goals, of the type that demand immediate military retaliation by the democratic superpowers. No, what is stunning is the implicit admission that Germany's, and Europe's, largest electrical engineering company, has been not only quietly transacting with none other than world peace (as portrayed by the MSM) enemy #1, Iran, but instrumental in its nuclear program.

After the financial debacle caused by a thieving and uncontrolled Thug-elite (banksters, Wall Street, moneyed interests), helped in part by a society ready to be courted by its very own ugly greed, this time in real estate, one would think the electorate would have economics as the prime, if not the sole focus when casting a ballot in this next presidential election.  And that would entail castigating politicians, or parties, who could be justly blamed for such debacle and for embracing globalization without a viable plan for those Americans who would be left behind without living-wage jobs; while rewarding politicians, or parties, who offer a reasonable way out, not just of the present mess we are in, but of the impending uglier mess which looms in the horizon.  But that would be taxing reality in a nation which has failed to charge Wall Street criminals, for the most part Republicans; in a nation where Bill Clinton, the godfather of American globalization, continues to be held in high esteem by a clueless Democrat party.

Even as the popular ADHD affliction is preoccupied with who paid what taxes, and whether this poll shows that guy on top or this one, until tomorrow when they flip providing even more meaningless chitchat opportunities, everyone appears to have once again lost sight of the big picture, which is that two US ships continue full steam ahead toward Iran, namely the CVN-74 Stennis aircraft carrier which has crossed the Pacific ocean and is now a week away from its target, and the LHA 5 Peleliu big deck amphibious warfare ship, where they will join two other aircraft carriers and the LHD 7 Iwo Jima as summarized by the graphic below. Why is US naval presence in the Gulf soaring to a concentration not seen since the last Gulf war? The head of the Iran revolutionary guard may have an idea. From Reuters: Israel will eventually go beyond threats and will attack Iran, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards was quoted as saying on Saturday. "A war will occur, but it's not clear where or when it will be," Jafari was quoted as saying on Saturday. "Israel seeks war with us, but it's not clear when the war will occur."