International Panorama: Iran and Donald Trump, the failed return to the starting point

Another suggests that the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, as is known to be strategic for the world energy system, will quickly reorganize crude oil supplies, dissolving the economic crisis that threatens Trump electorally in the November legislative elections. This observation would indicate that The Republican leader would point out that everything related to the Gulfexcept the liberation of navigability, is postponed until after those elections that are extraordinarily important for the survival of its political power. So, as pointed out The New York Timeswhat would be being discussed “is not a peace agreement. It is not a nuclear agreement. It is not an agreement on missiles.” Nor will it promote a regime change and there is no such thing related to the unconditional surrender that was demanded. This is what the memorandum revealed this Thursday states.

The cracks in that construction are already appearing. From the Republican camp, harsh voices emerge against the White House strategy, who see it as a capitulation or a rdisorderly exit and on worse terms to Barack Obama’s agreement with Iran in 2015. That pact froze the nuclear development of the Persian country, the enriched uranium was transferred to Russia and no one talked about Hormuz. The scheme worked with international surveillance and consolidated a more pro-Western moderate regime.

Trump repudiates that agreement, but does not seem to offer anything better. The former foreign minister of Trump’s first term, Mike Pompeo, described what there is as “failed pact”; The head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker, said that es “a disaster” the negotiationand John Bolton, his former National Security Advisor, maintains that it all boils down to “a significant victory for the ayatollahs“An even more significant voice has been that of the former US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro. He states that “The war was a mistake from the beginning, ill-conceived in every way. The agreement described is weak and the net result of this war is significant damage to American strategic interests.”

The intensification of Israel’s attacks on South Lebanon is, in turn, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to Trump’s negotiating position and a sign that the American leader does not dominate the scene. The skirmishes of these hours and the tycoon’s bellicose speech would seek to cover up the need to negotiate and precisely that uncomfortable thing that is negotiated. By keeping the military threat active, Trump would seek to justify before public opinion any subsequent concession, which would not be a weakness, but the result of having “cornered” to Iran.

It is an approach that can become childish. And end up in what we want to avoid, an inevitably prolonged war in the style of Iraq or Afghanistan. One extreme of the weaknesses of the scenario is the “order” of Trump so that Saudi Arabia and Qatar join the Abraham Accords and normalize their relationship with Israel, which would show a historic victory in the midst of these shadows. But pro-Western Arab countries do not want to do so if the condition agreed upon in the truce in Gaza, which includes a Palestinian state solution, is not met. This is not a gesture of solidarity with that people. It is a strategic question; An exit without that condition would enrage the Arab masses, especially after the demolition offensive in the Strip.

But the end of this labyrinth is seen even more clearly in the fact that the US and Israel have considered that the former Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hawk with a bad reputation in his own country, could be the alternative for a new government in Iran. This news can be very shocking for Argentina. Ahmadinejad was the one who negotiated the memorandum of understanding on the AMIA with the Kirchner government. The former president, who won his reelection in 2009 with fraud and beating the moderate opposition, maintained close ties with the Venezuela of Hugo Chávez and the Ecuador of Rafael Correa. With those countries, and possibly with Argentina, he negotiated the transfer of undeclared oil in false flag vessels, in exchange for the liquid money necessary to finance the nuclear program, evading sanctions.

Then there is the other assumption that if the Strait of Hormuz and full navigability in the Gulf are reopened, the energy crisis is resolved. A recent report from Financial Times puts it in doubt. Turkish economist Fatih Birol, director of the International Energy Agency, affirms that the world is entering “in the biggest energy crisis in history.” And it won’t be resolved quickly. Iran’s attacks on the Arab environment left eight major Gulf refineries completely or partially out of service. The same occurs with the Ras Laffan plant in Qatar, the largest liquefied gas plant in the world, which would require five years to be repaired and supply the global North again.

The British newspaper, which quotes the former vice president of strategy at British Petroleum and member of King’s College, Nick Butler, an authority on the matter, points out that the Gulf region exported 3.5 million barrels per day of refined oil products and 1.5 million of crude oil. That is no longer on the market. But the shortages are far from limited to energy. Supplies of helium, gasoline, methanol, phosphates, urea, ammonia and sulfur are also affected.. The reduction of helium, for example, hurts chip production. Fertilizers, for their part, hit global food production.

Trump needs to resolve this mess, which has driven the cost of gasoline in his country above US$4.50 a gallon, 50% more than they cost before the wara fact that explains his notable drop in the polls. The scenario is so torrid that investors are betting on a rate hike before the end of the year, even with the new head of the FED, Kevin Warsh, who Trump appointed to lower them. Iran abuses these existential emergencies and they are the ones that Israel ignores in Lebanon.

Nobody knows what can happen at the November polls. There is no time and politics does not allow guesses. But analysts observe that Trump is not making it easy on himself, not just with the Gulf labyrinth. In the Republican internal elections he has promoted vertical candidates under his command, running away to the moderate ones who could oxygenate the party. He just did it in Texas, where a Trumpist leader, accused of crimes of bribery and abuse of power, Ken Paxton, defeated a prestigious Republican senator, John Cornyn, creating a tremor in the pro-government bloc in the upper house. Shortly before, the same thing happened in Kentucky with Representative Thomas Massie, defeated by Ed Gallrein, a former member of the SEALs and a fan of the president.

Democrats celebrate. They consider Trump’s involvement in the elections and the promotion of candidates who identify with his image at a time when presidential popularity is collapsing in the polls as a textbook error. A burden from which many pro-government leaders silently try to escape. Now Trump says he is not worried about these elections. But Trump says a lot of things.