More Food For Thought
If a cannibal kept assuring you that you were on his dinner menu as soon as he got all his knives sharpened, wouldn’t you consider that a real enough threat to attack the cannibal first? Or would you wait until he started carving a roast off your flank?
Iran has claimed a test firing of 9 missiles including long-range (1250 miles) “Shahab” missiles capable of carrying a nuke to Israel although a “senior US defense official” said that only seven were launched on Wednesday, not nine as claimed. This is very likely true as Iran has a consistent history of exaggerating the facts for the sole purpose of taunting their enemies. They’ve made it very clear that they intend to wipe Israel off the map, have repeatedly said so, have developed the missiles capable of delivering the death blows and are steadily progressing toward building nuclear weapons for the missiles to carry.
So will Israel wait until the Iranians actually detonate nukes in Israel, or will they attact pre-emptively? One of the two will happen.
The financiers of our planet seem to expect the latter, as crude-oil futures Friday soared more than $5 to a new all-time high above $147 a barrel, rallying on speculation that Israel may be nearer to launching an attack on Iran and on worries that supplies in Nigeria and Brazil may be disrupted.
Most of the current upward pressure is about Iran, but there’s concern about more violence likely in Nigeria from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, “MEND”, and an oil workers strike looming in Brazil. While Iran is the worlds 4th largest producer of oil, that’s not as much as it sounds, since that’s only 5% of the total global production, but it’s enough to drive changes in the market.
Before the price of oil skyrocketed, war with Iran was financially unthinkable because of the degree of price increase that would result. Now, however, the loss of Irans oil is less important in terms of price increases. The previous spectre of oil at $150 or $200 a barrel as a result of such a war has already faded into the light of the reality of those prices now, and it’s only been this economic fear that’s prevented war.
Iran wants this war, to bring about “the return of the hidden Imam”, a crackpot religious belief that supposedly ends with the entire world being forcibly converted to Islam, and they will have it one way or another. We know it, too, and all these efforts at diplomacy have only allowed Iran to progress further toward their goal.