The Iran conflict will continue on a low flame (occasional pinpricks like now) forever.
It serves the US Energy Dominance Agenda against China, Japan, India and the EU.
The Trump administration does not care about "its" population. There were already rumors early in the Trump term that Trump would not mind a recession so that his real estate cronies could buy cheap foreclosures.
So it is all a double win for the oligarchs. The stock market is still fine, nothing else matters.
That is ascribing far too much strategic thinking to this administration. They're just not capable of the kind of planning and foresight that would require.
The administration's planning is much more along the lines of, Will this look cool when they announce it on Fox News tomorrow? If you think there's much beyond that, you're ascribing strategic clarity where there isn't any. They're continue to flail around and TACO until they have a result they can present to MAGA loyalists as a success, regardless of actual merits.
It's not a question of ethics. It's a question of competence.
It's not the administration doing the strategic thinking. The administration is entirely reactive and straightforward to manipulate -- if you have money.
The people with strategic goals just send money and compliments and the administration does what they want.
I mostly agree with you, but I do think they’re highly skilled at taking advantage of whatever messes they cause. “Chaos is a ladder” might as well be the theme of this decade.
I would not underestimate the figures in the background. Trump and Hegseth are clowns of course, but they don't make policies.
The energy dominance model was already floated by Trump in his first term. He was the most vocal critic of Nordstream long before the Ukraine war. Biden couldn't push so aggressively because of the green agenda but dutifully shut down Nordstream and made the EU dependent on US LNG.
Now with the oil barons in power, there are no green agenda limitations and the long term plan (which is 100% not from Trump himself) can accelerate.
Look how they already make the EU and Japan rearm with all these levers (they should rearm, but for the purposes of keeping waterways free from whomever blocks them ...).
> It serves the US Energy Dominance Agenda against China, Japan, India and the EU
…how? What is this agenda? Juicing short-term energy exports? That’s not a “dominance agenda.”
The National Energy Dominance Council primarily cites national security interests:
https://www.eenews.net/articles/white-house-launches-energy-...
It works towards increasing US energy production at all costs even though the US is already a net exporter.
What is not mentioned of course is that increased US dependencies of countries like Japan are a feature:
https://energytracker.asia/japan-to-buy-record-amounts-of-ln...
That model, extort US investments and let Japan build US infrastructure in return for LNG was from 2025.
Now, with the Iran conflict, Qatar is shut off and Japan can be pressured even more.
> with the Iran conflict, Qatar is shut off and Japan can be pressured even more
I see your argument. It’s still short term. A fifth of Japanese electricity comes from renewables [1]. Meanwhile, Japan is diversifying its LNG suppliers [2].
[1] https://www.iea.org/countries/japan/renewables
[2] https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/16464707
If this ends up being the case, 15 years from now we might look back at this as the catalyst for supercharging the energy transition across the world ex-US.
Might be wishful thinking, but I see this as the silver lining of the conflict
> I see this as the silver lining of the conflict
From what I can tell it’s also supercharging coal, particularly in Asia, e.g. India investing in coal gasification infrastructure [1].
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-clears-4-billi...
That doesn’t make sense. In the medium term this will strengthen efforts in China, Japan, India and the EU to move away from fossil fuel dependence much more quickly.
I've seen this strange theory pop up a few times but it makes absolutely zero sense.
For one even in the short term this is benefiting China as its the largest renewables producer in the world and much less exposed to ME fuels than Japan and America's allies, who are to put it in plain English, fucked. (Japan gets 80-90% of its resources from the Gulf, China ~15-20%)
Secondly the only thing that wakes the American voter out of his or her perpetual stupor is the cost at the gas station, and every single person responsible for this will be voted out of office. I cannot imagine that even the oil industry wants a blue wave just because they could crank the prices for a few months
Absolutely hard Agree here. Thank you.
> It serves the US Energy Dominance Agenda
I can believe the US/UK oil companies believe that.
It may even be true, because the energy transition caps the entire future opportunity for oil/gas sales, and all the producers have been trying to capture a larger share of that pie for the last 2 years or so.
But this intervention is so heavy-handed that it is visibly destroying that future market. It looks like all oil companies will lose a lot because of it, US/UK ones included.
> The Trump administration does not care about "its" population.
Yes, he's trying to govern like an oligarch. We will see in November if this was a good choice or if the US is still too democratic for this to work. Or earlier if he tries to avoid that test.