War imminent? of the US against Iran

It is bad news for the ayatollah regime without a doubt, but it is also bad news for China, a player whose relevance would be a factor, not the only one but by no means minor, that would explain the dangerous dynamic that this scenario exhibits. Beijing is Tehran’s largest energy customer. Between 80% and 90% of all Iranian oil exports end up in Chinese refineries, according to market intelligence platforms, Kpler and Vortex.

It is equivalent to between 13 and 15% of China’s total seaborne crude oil imports. The other supplier, apart from Russia, was Venezuela, rounding out 3%. If the US ends up controlling Iran, as it did with the Chavista dictatorship, will choke a crucial energy pipeline of the People’s Republic. And if it happens in the next few hours, as the worst forecasts announce, it will happen on the threshold of the summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in the Chinese capital.

The portal Axioswell informed about US strategic movements, warns of an already total and imminent readiness for the military offensive. The same holds The New York Times citing government sources. There is already a formidable structure in place in the region. Trump moved to the area two aircraft carriers, among them the largest in the world, which operated in the Caribbean against Venezuela, with dozens of combat aircraft, F35, F22 and F16 and backup missile destroyers.

This deployment is not done just to threaten. The size of the force is due to meeting the offensive objective, but also to nullify the Iranian reaction power, which has a recognized development of projectiles and drones. These are war conditions.

“This military operation in Iran will be a extensive mass campaign in time, more similar to a full-fledged war than last month’s specific operation in Venezuela,” dice Axiosremembering the attack that stopped Nicolás Maduro but kept the Chavista dictatorship intact. Since this scenario is very different, he adds that “The war would have a drastic impact on the entire region and serious implications for the remaining three years of the Trump presidency.”

In the previous episode against Iran last year, Donald Trump’s all-terrain negotiator, real estate businessman Steven Witkoff, was heading for a supposedly final round on Sunday, June 15 in Muscat, Oman. He was negotiating with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, a moderate who was trying a pact to contain the bellicose pressure of the hawks who had suffered a humiliating defeat in the 2024 elections. But Israel suddenly began an all-out attack in the early hours of June 13, demolishing that encounter.

The coup surprised Iraniansthe senior commanders were confident that the high-level meeting overshadowed any military undertaking. Many of them died in their apartments, and so did the regime’s nuclear scientists. That’s when the US bombed the theocracy’s underground atomic laboratories. At that time, it was sought at the negotiating table that Iran would cease uranium enrichment, accept more rigorous inspections and get rid of the material that had already been enriched to 60%, very close to 90%. necessary to make an explosive device.

This time, in the midst of doubts about the real effect of the North American bombings, the dialogue these days in Abu Dhabi first and then in Geneva, aimed to recreate the historic nuclear agreement promoted in 2015 by Barack Obama that froze Iranian development and handed over uranium to Russia.

Let us remember that Trump, in a extraordinary failed diplomat, He deactivated it in his first presidency, under pressure from Saudi Arabia and Israel with the argument that Iran should also get rid of its missile systems, an item that was not included in the Vienna agreements of 2015. With the same negotiators, Witkoff and Araghchi, the issue of missiles has now become the main disagreement between the parties which adds to the demand that Iran abandon its armed wings in the region, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Huties in Yemen.

The Iranian government of President Masoud Pezeshkian has given signs that it is willing to reach a deep nuclear agreement, but not to those last two points resisted by the hawks. The regime is not unitary and both the president and Araghchi, —by the way, the negotiator in 2015 with Obama—, are only one part, the most open of that apparatus. A few hours ago the Revolutionary Guard, The army parallel to the regular one, and which is at the same time one of the vertices of Iranian business power, closed part of the Strait of Hormuz to “military maneuvers” with live fire, in addition to military exercises with Russia in the Indian Ocean and in the Sea of ​​Oman. A response to North American demands and a limit to the negotiators.

That strait is an Achilles heel of the global economy, considered the most important energy artery in the world. 20% of the world’s oil and condensate consumption passes through there, and 20% of global LNG trade (liquefied gas). Trump has initially clung to the negotiations because the war could skyrocket oil prices with a ruinous domestic effect in an election year in which he faces doubtful chances in the November legislative elections.

But there are changes in the region. Both Israel and the Arab powers allied with the US and associated with Trump’s companies maintain that it is advisable to advance on Iran. Until recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that “revolutions are better from within”in the idea of ​​​​preventing an attack and promoting a popular uprising that would collapse the dictatorship as it seemed that would happen last January. The Arab powers, meanwhile, abandoned their initial reluctance and on the last day of January, Prince Khaldi bin Saldam, the Saudi defense minister, warned Washington that if an attack does not happen the regime would be strengthened.

Iran’s manifest weakness explains this turn. Tehran faces an economy in crisis and inflation, the abysmal devaluation of the local currency (Last December alone the rial lost 20% of its value, and almost 50% in the last year) and a majority repudiation of the population to the repressive machine of the ayatollahs that killed at least 6 thousand people in the January protests. Added to this is the fragility of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, 86 years old, living in hiding and apparently ill. Also for all this Trump sent his second aircraft carrier, convinced that he has the winning cards.

Both Israel and the Saudis demand not only the nuclear issue, which is relative because the Persian country is far from having an atomic attack system, but they are especially concerned deactivate its missile capacity and pro-Iranian militias.

There is one additional fact to observe. The regime continues to support Hamas which is taking control of Gaza again. It’s a challenge to the peace agreement that stopped that war and that fuels Israeli extremism, risking the objective interests of the Trump corporation associated with Arab capitalists from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Emirates.

Peace is key to moving forward in a multimillion dollar business. It is no coincidence that this negotiation is being carried out not by Foreign Minister Marco Rubio, but by Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also a real estate businessman. If everything has to do with everything, here is an example. And very dangerous.