This is officially my first post on this blog, I’m not a professional writer by any means, however I have always enjoyed it. Writing out my thoughts was always easier to me than explaining them. So I decided to rebrand my X account to Iraq Business Journal and start writing.
Why the name choice?
Simply because I owned the domain. Previously I had an idea to start an English based business news outlet focusing on Iraq, and decided to just use that name for this blog.
For the first blog post, I have chosen to write about the current events happening in the Middle East, explaining the reasons I believe the current ongoing war between Iran, Israel and the United States will not be ending anytime soon. There are so many opinions out there on why the war has started, who’s to blame, what the outcome will be and who will win this war.
Truth of the matter is no one really wins a war.
The civilians always end up paying the price and the politicians almost always face no consequences for their actions and decisions. All War unfortunately means is that a lot of money is being made, by a very small number of people.
First lets connect all the events so we can fully understand what has happened.
This in my opinion goes back all the way to 2003, the American invasion of Iraq. Based on lies, the United States administration decided it would invade Iraq, destroy its infrastructure, destroy its institutions, dismantle the army which could have kept the country in order, and destroy its’ society by installing a group of criminals who only cared about money.
A group of thieves, who had previously named themselves the Iraqi opposition, unknown to the majority of the local Iraqi population decided they wanted to run this so called ‘democracy’ in Iraq which was doomed to fail from the start.
The whole thing was very obvious from the start, their history was filled with treason to the country and its people. Many served in the Iranian army during the Iran-Iraq war, killing their own fellow citizens.
Anyway, everyone knows this story, but why Iraq? It was increasingly becoming a threat from an Israeli point of view. Furthermore, the whole GCC would benefit from the complete destruction of Iraq after the Kuwait episode. Iraq forced Iran to sign a ceasefire after eight years of war and during this time Iraq emerged as a powerful force in the region. If you are familiar with Arab tribal traditions, you would know that this wasn’t acceptable, they had to bring the country down, because you know everyone wants to be the leader.
Then there was the war in Lebanon with Hizb Allah, then Gaza, then came something no one expected. Im speeding through the events here, but next was the Arab spring.
The youth in the Arab countries over time shifted from political bloggers to social media political activists and noticed they can form movements using these platforms, especially twitter then. The populations were sick and tired of how countries were run, how they are simply puppets and not acting or running their countries in the interest of its citizens. It quickly spread like fire from Tunisia to Egypt. The situation became very dangerous, and something had to happen. Something had to control the outcome of these uprisings. Then Syria, Iraq, then the ISIS events. This was becoming extremely dangerous for the management of the whole region.
Back to Iraq and since the US failed in every aspect of their new project in Iraq, to top it off, they handed over the country to Iran, and for over twenty years Iran has basically run wild in Iraq using militias that are loyal to the Supreme leader of Iran, the late Khamenaei. Writing Supreme Leader for some reason reminds me the Command & Conquer the PC game. Anyways with full approval from the US they were allowed to run the country as they wish, murder, theft, corruption, you name it, a complete failure of the state serving only Iran and its Supreme Leader.
This chaos is not coincidental. The fall of Iraq and Syria leaves three contenders for the top job in that geographical location. Iran, Israel and Turkey. The GCC as a whole could be, however the competition has started between those countries many years back which leaves Saudi alone in that Peninsula. However I still believe the three main ones are Iran, Israel, and Turkey.
Turkey proved to be a successful alternative, or at least it was marketed as that to the populations in the region. A strong military power, historically they have always been close to Arabs, but their still remains the problem of the economy and a growing racist movement against the Arabs.
Irans main audience is the Shiite populations in Iraq mainly, Lebanon, Yemen and some regions of the Arabian peninsula like Bahrain and the eastern parts of Saudi Arabia.
Benjamin Netanyahu, intensely lobbied the US government to invade Iraq six months before the March 2003 invasion. So he managed to take Iraq out of the picture. This criminal has a plan and he will not stop until he sees it through. Unfortunately nothing we see today gives me any indication that anyone really wants to stop him.
His next target was to eliminate any threats like Hamas and Hizb Allah, he felt that it was now the time to bring down the regime in Iran and eliminate threat number two after his final goal which is Turkey.
After they announced the ceasefire yesterday evening I immediately thought to myself, this will never hold simply because Israel wont have it. The demands of Iran are completely humiliating to the United States. Netanyahu will never retreat from this plan. And to add the GCC countries can no longer accept this regime in power. These countries have successfully managed to build their economies around the idea of peace and stability and this no longer exists. So to have this continuous threat right next door is completely out of the question.
So as we understand now, or what is being reported from several sources, the ten point plan which is circulating includes:
1. A formal U.S. commitment to nonaggression against Iran
2. Continued Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz
3. Recognition of Iran’s right to enrichment
4. Full removal of U.S. primary sanctions
5. Full removal of U.S. secondary sanctions
6. Termination of all UN Security Council resolutions against Iran
7. Termination of all IAEA Board of Governors resolutions against Iran
8. Payment of compensation to Iran
9. Withdrawal of U.S. military forces from the region
10. Ceasefire across all fronts, including attacks against the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon
Looking deeper into those demands:
2. Continued Iranian control over the strait. Firstly they never had full control over the strait before the war, why would the US and any of the neighbouring countries agree to this. This is definitely out of the question. Iran wants to charge a toll for passing the strait and this has already been refused by every other country in the region.
4 and 5. Removal of sanctions, this is just a laughing matter to be honest, for the past twenty years, Iran has been bypassing the sanctions through Iraq, the UAE, Turkey and other countries as well, with full knowledge and approval from the US and European governments.
8. Payment of compensation to Iran. What about the other countries in the region, wont they all demand compensation from Iran for the destruction caused, and how will this is valued? This wont pass as well.
9. Withdrawal of US military forces from the region, now this is simply out of the question. None of the GCC countries will agree to this and neither would Israel, let alone the US suddenly deciding they don’t want to be in full control of a vital region like the Middle East.
10. Ceasefire on all fronts. Israel hasn’t finished its business yet so why would they accept that.
We still don’t know if this is the actual list. Maybe theres more than one list, who knows.
When I look at this war I remember the Iraq scenario. Ten years of sanction no country has ever been through. Five hundred and sixty thousand children died from malnutrition alone. The weapons inspectors, the lies, the continuous bombing every couple of years.
Preparing the population to accept an American invasion, that was the purpose of the sanctions. To force the population to kneel, but even after all this suffering, the US couldn’t stay in Iraq any longer and basically handed the country over to Iran.
However with this war there are some differences, Iran is a larger country, they have managed to hold the world economy hostage to an extent. They aren’t fighting 42 countries like Iraq did. So it wont be an easy job to topple the government. The government I believe does have its supporters outside of the main cities. It is a much more complicated situation, hence I think this will not be over anytime soon. These points, if true wont be accepted by any of the parties involved. The Iranians will not back down. Netanyahu wont stop until he achieves what he wants, or at least thinks he could. And the Gulf no longer is a safe investment environment as long as this regime in Iran still stands, and they wont accept that.
Lets not forget, in terms of the GCC countries, I don’t even think Israel wants a stable GCC anymore, Israel wants to be the one and only hub in the region, so it serves their interests to destabilise the whole region altogether. Add to that an elevated price of oil for longer serves other major oil producers and exporters very nicely, so why end this quickly. Let it run for as long as possible and sell as many weapons as you can. How much are those patriot systems again ? 4 million dollars per missile?
This will be a long and painful war, one that has dragged all the nations in the region into a time of instability. It may be fought on and off, but there is one thing that we can be certain of, and that is its not over.