The US is at war with Iran. We’ve been making predictions for 2012 and beyond and will go about a somewhat random order depending on what seems the most relevant. We recently saw some comments that make the Iran topic seem like the next one to bring to your attention.
The war with Iran has already begun. The West has been conducting every type of warfare other than actual physical combat. The most recent strikes have been economic and financial warfare. The biggest blow so far was when the US told the world that anyone who does business with the Iranian Central Bank will not be allowed to do business with the US. The Iranian’s currency value dropped in half because of this.
There’s rumor that the US is considering forcing SWIFT (a Belgium firm which transacts most all world banking transactions) to cut off Iran. Of course, SWIFT has no desire to be in this political nightmare, but might have little choice if the governments turn on it. This would be a huge hammer against Iran and also might have terrible backlash consequences to the West.
Already, Iran has been increasing its move away from using the US Dollar in transactions because of the above mentioned sanction. There have been talks with Russia, Iran, and others about transacting in those local currencies &/or gold for trade instead of USD. And this goes to the heart of the biggest reason the US is against Iran.
The US talks about nuclear capability and there is certainly some truth to this as well get to below. But the biggest reason the US has started wars over the last decade has to do with protecting the USD as the world’s reserve currency.
You see, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had told the world that it was moving away from accepting USD for its oil. Only a couple years later, the US invaded Iraq.
Later, Lybia’s Kaddafi told the world that it would stop accepting USD for oil and would instead institute an African wide gold dinar. Soon after, the US invaded Iraq and allowed Muslim extremists to take over that country.
This second point is telling because apparently the US would rather see Al Queada running Lybia (as long as they use USD) then see Kaddafi running it while refusing to accept USD!
This is the reason that the US overthrew Kaddafi even though he did not do anything to his own people in comparison to what is going on in Syria. The US might end up invading Syria too, but Syria doesn’t produce oil and hasn’t threatened to be a part of bringing down the USD hegemony and thus they are safe for now.
Iran, however, is committing the big sin in the eyes of the US government.
Now, the second point is much more horrifying if you look at it from the eyes of an Israeli. We’ll lay this one out on Monday…
This is the 12th post in a series. You should read the initial thoughts on these forecasts here. and the Overall Prediction Page here. Here are the rest of the posts: 3) Ben Bernanke’s Dollar Devaluation Plan, 4) The Coming US Dollar Devaluation, 5) Stock Market Volatility, & 6) Stocks to Fall in 2012, 7) The European Crises, & 8) European Options, 9) European Prediction, 10) Recession in Japan, 11) Japanese Yen Crash, & 12) War with Iran.