Submitted by Steve Brown…
Florida Senator Marco Rubio posted a typical whining comment on June 28th, “The Administration stopped issuing sanctions waivers for Iranian oil exports in May, yet China just received massive oil cargo from Iran. The tanker Saline, capable of carrying 1 million barrels, docked in Jianzhou bay on June 20.”
To illustrate how far things have fallen in the west, the prospect that one nation – any nation – may determine on behalf of any other sovereign nation the means by which it trades, is not only absurd, but supremely dangerous.
While this is no surprise to most people, when US threats of gunboats and sanctions fail to intimidate nations like China and Russia, then that creates a sense of alarm in US State. While the US B-team bandies about empty threats on the world stage — Trump claimed he was minutes away from striking Iran for Iran’s defensive strike on a US Global Hawk RQ-4 on June 20th, then he backed down, full of doubt — the US State Department is now preparing to issue a special use waiver to China, allowing China to purchase Iranian oil.
Now, the reason for the US waiver to China on Iranian oil imports is simply to save face, and prevent embarrassment: a) that the US has no control over China’s infrastructure or foreign policy and China can present its middle finger to the former United States quite freely and b) the fact that sanctions don’t really work long term. As examples, when targeted nations like North Korea or Cuba truly want to circumvent the US financial and military jack boot, then they will.
And for China to provide any means for Iran to escape America’s insane foreign policy role as treacherous double-dealer and Geopolitical ‘agent provocateur’ on behalf of Israel surely incites fear and loathing within the halls of US State… and not just within the B-team Executive.
Indeed, the US ‘B-team’ has given China a major source of leverage in trade talks now, where China can leverage the US incrementally away from its master Israel on the subject of Iran (by allowing China to import Iranian crude) while negotiating the trade war initiated by the United States.
From this backdrop, we must also consider the recent illegal seizure of the GRACE-1 by United Kingdom forces; that seizure was directed by the United States in its continuing effort to prove itself the most treacherous Bad Actor on the global stage. Gibraltar has firmly denied however that the ship seizure was at the direction of the US:
(see below)
Whether the GRACE 1 tanker was operating beyond EU sanctions on Syria or not is certainly no business of the United States — and the move was certainly intended to inflame and provoke ill-will between the EU and Iran. Well, that’s just how the B Team operates.
A master chess player, Iran is now perfectly positioned to play its tactical rook. While largely symbolic, the placement of that rook on the board (ie Iran potentially taking a UK ship in retaliation) poses a big new challenge to both the EU and US. The B-team can only respond with more bluster and more war rhetoric toward Iran. That will confirm Iran’s position with regard to owning the moral high ground, while a demoralized and dispirited B-team can only rattle its limp sword. *
More to the point, is the reaction of Europe to US treachery in withdrawing from the JCPOA, where Europe could have poked its finger in the US eye, and refused to comply with secondary US economic sanctions on Iran.
The typical line is that European corporations prefer to do business in the US market, instead of Iran’s, given that ultimatum. But that’s not so. The ECB could easily guarantee payments to Iran and risk upsetting its relation with the US Treasury, and should do so on a far greater scale than simply founding a toothless INSTEX.
By failing to confront the US Treasury on Iran, the EU confirms its role as ineffectual and weak, a lap dog to the US and Israel, incapable of standing on its own, or effecting policy on its own.
Finally, we must consider that which we have always proposed: that US hubris and hegemonic arrogance will cause it to fail by its own hand one day – and no other. And the present course of the regime in Washington must ensure that outcome… the supreme irony being that Iran may be the means by which that outcome occurs!
*The danger to this tinder box of course is another Israeli or Saudi false flag versus ships in the Strait of Hormuz, as we saw last month.
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