Counter Punch: China and Russia in the Persian Gulf. Eve Ottenberg: 21-04-2026: **************

 April 21, 2026

China and Russia in the Persian Gulf

Eve Ottenberg

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The Persian Gulf at night from the ISS. Photograph Source: NASA – Public Domain

When the Chinese tanker, Rich Starry, defied the U.S. blockade April 14 by going through the Strait of Hormuz, it redefined the blockade. This easy transit may have had something to do with a statement, the day before, by China’s defense minister, Admiral Dong Jun, at the beginning of the U.S. blockade: “Our ships are moving in and out of the waters of the Strait of Hormuz. We have trade and energy agreements with Iran. We will respect and honor them and expect others not to meddle in our affairs. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz and it is open for us.”

Although the U.S.’s, under Donald “Steal the Oil” Trump, sole purpose seems to be to corner the planet’s energy market (vide Trump’s Venezuelan escapades and more recent Iranian ones) this program has several fatal flaws, most especially “upending an emerging détente with China,” as the New York Times put it April 14 and, even more inanely, fails to take into account that U.S. global oil strangulation has boosted Russian energy profits into the stratosphere, so that, if Moscow wants, it can sell discounted oil to Beijing. Oh, and also, China sends its solar tech all over the world, recently, most notably, to Cuba, where U.S. secretary of state Marco “Regime Change” Rubio convinced el jefe to choke off all energy supplies, something at which the Kremlin, being blockade-averse for historical reasons rooted in the horrifying siege of Leningrad, responded by sending a huge tanker loaded with oil to Havana. And another is on the way.

Meanwhile in mid-April, the Iran Observer announced on X: “China Warships in Hormuz!” This post included photos of PLA Navy ships, though of course they could have been anywhere. But if the Iran Observer is accurate, that may account for the ease with which on April 14, the Chinese tanker and three other Iran-linked ships transited the Strait. Or that could have had something to do with the six submarines, two nuclear, that Moscow plunked down near the Strait of Hormuz, back on April 5. Whatever the cause, China and Russia are in the Person Gulf, but both they and western media apparently wish to be very discreet about it – though for nearly opposite reason. The Chinese and the Russians because they do everything they can discreetly, while western media, on the other hand, wants to hype U.S. power, and stories about the Eurasian military giants’ presence in the Persian Gulf don’t do that.

How much money is Moscow making in the oil trade thanks to Trump’s ill-considered and barbaric blockade? $117.46 per barrel as of April 14 – a big surge caused largely by Don Coreleone in the white house throttling Hormuz. Prior to February 28, when Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu took it into their heads to attack Iran, Russian Urals crude went for $57 to $58 per barrel. Over the course of early March, the price spiked, and has been spiking ever since, so that Moscow is now making money hand over fist. So’s Tehran. And just in case the Trump dimwits’ plan to starve China of oil actually starts to work, the Kremlin has jumped in, as yours truly predicted recently in these pages and, despite its recent cutoff of all gasoline exports, offered to lend China a helping hand. “Russia can plug any oil supply gap and help China…withstand U.S. ‘aggressive adventures,’ Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has said,” RT reported April 15. “Lavrov’s remarks came after U.S. Treasury Secretary [and primo airhead] Scott Bessent warned on Tuesday that China is ‘not going to be able to get their oil…not Iranian oil.” Bessent also boasted, erroneously (surprise!) that Beijing’s ships would not pass through Hormuz, an idiocy that may have prompted Trump’s proclamation the next day that he was opening the Strait “for China.”

In fact, Trump announced that he would “PERMANENTLY reopen” the waterway “after Beijing supposedly agreed not to send weapons to Iran,” RT reported April 15. Note the word “supposedly” in this headline. As a regular reader of RT, I can tell you that that is the first time in some years I have seen that word in a headline. So the take from official Moscow might be skepticism? Ya think? And don’t you think Moscow has a more informed view of Beijing’s activities and needs in the Persian Gulf than Trump? Well, you could say many people do and you’d be correct, but the Kremlin especially. Russia, China and Iran have an alliance, the genuine article. Not just some marriage of convenience, like the deformities we see between the U.S. and its proxies. The notion that Chinese president Xi Jinping promised Donald Trump to stop arming a vital ally, with whom China has a relationship of alive, tested loyalty and to whom China has given planeloads of armament as that ally was beaten bloody by Israel and the U.S., and as that ally fought back valiantly, with China and Russia at its side – well, that notion is preposterous.

Maybe the hilarious internet memes about blockading a blockade shamed Trump, or maybe the brainless apercus of Scott Bessent and voluble nitwit Florida Republican senator Rick Scott, who announced on a talk show that he was so keen on busting up China’s economy that he didn’t care if the blockade caused high prices here – maybe the nonpareil observations of these morons about their comfort with Trump causing a worldwide depression alarmed the president. Or maybe he found even more alarming Iran’s minatory statement that it is waiting for the ceasefire to end before making “the blockade extremely painful for the U.S.,” according to a military source quoted by Iran Observer on X April 15. “All imports and exports in the region will be banned. Ports throughout the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman will be targeted. The Red Sea will also be blockaded, and experience shows that the U.S. Navy will not be able to reopen it.”

Well, that’s enough to sober up even the most intoxicated narcissist. Because yes, that’s exactly what experience shows, namely, when the Houthis shut down the Red Sea in solidarity with the bombed, poisoned, injured, traumatized, destitute, murdered and homeless people of Gaza, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of the U.S. navy or Israel’s mesmerizing tech reopening it. And they tried. But alea iacta est. Geography and Houthi grit stumped the American/Israeli aggressors, who, it turns out, are much better at slaughtering civilians, firebombing cities and torturing the next generation – as Israel has done in Gaza, where its military pollutants and chemicals, to which pregnant women have been exposed, have led to a huge cohort of infants born with agonizing deformities. That’s certainly what Israel is good at, and the U.S. is no slouch in that department either. So maybe Trump had some vague sense of his military’s limitations and what these deficits mean, namely that when faced with actual, competent, well-armed, highly committed troops, failure looms as a distinct possibility. Much easier to blow up a girl’s school and prestigious universities in Iran or to incinerate hospitals in Gaza.

In four weeks, Trump sojourns to Beijing, a journey most portentous for U.S./China relations, the American economy, the Empire’s continued global reach and for the boss of bosses personally. Suffice it to say, if Trump flubs this, due to his half-wit underlings’ or moronic members of the uniparty’s oracular pronouncements on the wretched U.S. blockade of Hormuz, he thoroughly tanks his “legacy.” And that legacy lately skates on thin ice. There’s Venezuela – truthfully or not, he gets to claim a big win there. There’s Gaza, where he can say at least he reduced the blood-letting, unlike Genocide Joe Biden, who was apparently happy to let the Israelis turn the entire enclave into a humongous crypt. But that’s about it. If he permits Bessent, Scott, two-faced J.D. Vance with his contortions about the spirituality of war or any of their ilk bust up his chance to make nice in Beijing, there goes the Trump political brand, up in smoke.

So the Trump/Xi confab is stupendously significant, especially for Trump. But the Iran War gums up the works. Assuming the white house honcho truly understands this, and there are omens that he does, he would want to wind down hostilities pronto – something which, in fact, he’s been trying to do for some time. Somebody should have told him this misbegotten war entailed fighting the Russia/China/Iran alliance – but even if they had, he likely would have proceeded with his arrant nonsense anyway, because no one among the nincompoops and cuckoo birds he’s surrounded with had any appreciation of the depth, tenacity, intelligence and sterling commitment of the Eurasian union. Indeed, few of our educated elites appreciated it either, due to the pervasive vapidities of western media. So unlucky Trump rushed in where angels fear to tread, only to wake up later, horrified at what he had done and desperate to undo it. I don’t say this much about things Trump, but in this case, we better hope he succeeds.

Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest novel is Old Man Alone. She can be reached at her website.

NEO: Iran and the USA: Ceasefire, Talks, Contradictiins: Alexandr Svaranc: 19-04-2026:

 

Security

Iran and USA: Ceasefire, Talks, Contradictions

Alexandr Svaranc, April 19, 2026

The forty-day war between the US and Israel and Iran has been paused. Islamabad and Geneva are potential platforms for US-Iranian talks. Will the shaky ceasefire bring lasting peace?

US changes tactics in Iran confrontation

The second anti-Iranian war was a consequence of Israel’s provocative policy. Despite significant losses in manpower and infrastructure from the massive airstrikes of the US-Israeli coalition, Iranian resistance did not cease. Instead, Tehran imposed its own tactics on the enemy: pinpoint and dispersed strikes on Israeli territory and infrastructure, as well as on a number of Arab countries in the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, and Jordan.

Trump’s threats to return the country to the Stone Age or destroy its civilization seem to be manifestations of paranoia and confusion

One of the most painful blows to Iran was the assassination of the supreme spiritual leader Ali Khamenei and several high-ranking military commanders, as well as the mass killing of schoolchildren and colossal destruction of industrial and energy infrastructure. However, President Trump’s statements about overthrowing the Iranian regime by eliminating Supreme Leader Khamenei and the heads of security forces turned out to be far from reality. Iran’s political system showed its resilience as Iranian society rallied around the government in the face of external aggression, and new leaders emerged to replace those who had been killed. The brutality of the aggressors, in essence, provoked a hardening of the Iranian authorities’ policies and enhanced the role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in state governance.

Iran’s most effective and predictable counterstrike was the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. This triggered a sharp rise in prices on global energy markets, with the price of oil jumping to $117 per barrel. Further escalation of the conflict could have doubled that figure. Many European and Asian countries faced the threat of energy supply disruptions and were forced to bring their oil reserves out of storage. The engines of global economic growth found themselves drawn into a global catastrophe.

Theoretically, the US Army did not rule out conducting a localized ground operation to capture Iran’s Kharg Island or nuclear facilities. Additional military units and equipment were being redeployed to the region. However, nobody could guarantee Trump military success, and the possibility of failure, which would have resulted in a major military and political defeat for the United States, could not be ruled out.

In the end, President Trump refused to further escalate the war. An hour and a half before the expiration of his ultimatum, he decided on a two-week ceasefire and the resumption of negotiations with the participation of mediator countries, including Pakistan, Türkiye, Egypt, China, and Russia. In effect, the United States is transitioning the confrontation with Iran from a hot conflict phase to a stage of diplomatic confrontation.

The US and Iran’s negotiating postures

In Islamabad, the parties have not yet reached full agreement. The United States insists on the unconditional rollback of Iran’s nuclear program for at least 20 years, with the transfer of all enriched uranium (about 430 kg) to the US. Iran rejects this demand and offers alternative options: IAEA control, a 5-year limitation period, transferring enriched uranium to Russia, or complete freedom for the Islamic Republic to develop peaceful nuclear energy.

Disagreements regarding the limitation of Iran’s missile program also persist, and there is no clarity on the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran insists on imposing a fee of $2 million per oil tanker, with subsequent revenue sharing with Oman, or, alternatively, on reparations for the damage caused by the war.

The question of Iran ceasing its support for pro-Iranian and anti-Israeli armed groups in the Middle East has not yet been clarified publicly. However, if the aggression against the Islamic Republic ceases, Tehran will naturally lose the need to use them on the Israeli front.

Being a pragmatist and businessman, President Donald Trump is rather inclined to agree to paid passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, with revenue sharing between Iran and Oman. According to ABC News, he even spoke positively about the possibility of creating a joint US-Iranian enterprise to collect the fee, calling it a “beautiful thing” for ensuring regional security. However, the currency of payment (dollars, yuan, or bitcoins) remains undecided. In that case, Washington would likely demand US involvement in Iran’s oil and gas trade.

Nevertheless, as the German magazine Der Spiegel notes, a temporary ceasefire does not resolve any of the key issues on which the US and Iran have so far been unable to reach an agreement.

When the ceasefire runs out, a choice will have to be made

The question of how the current ceasefire will end remains open and unpredictable. We are faced with two paths: reaching a compromise and peace, or continuing confrontation, which risks a resumption of hostilities or a transition to a protracted “cold war.”

Donald Trump cannot ignore the international community’s criticism (with the exception of Israel), the negative consequences for his election campaign in the United States, and, most importantly, the lack of a clear vision of how to achieve complete military victory over Iran. The two previous military campaigns seriously weakened Iran but did not break it. Trump’s threats to return the country to the Stone Age or destroy its civilization seem to be manifestations of paranoia and confusion.

However, the irrationality of Trump’s actions is bewildering. Given Israeli pressure, one cannot rule out the resumption of hostilities against Iran with renewed vigor, even including the use of tactical nuclear weapons. The additional US forces redeployed to the Middle East remain in the region for now. If the head of Mossad, David Barnea, enjoys greater trust than the head of US national intelligence, then there is nothing stopping President Trump from further escapades. But would this be a solution to the Iranian issue or the beginning of the end of Trump’s presidency?

Neither the United States nor Iran nor Israel are interested in a nuclear catastrophe. The use of nuclear weapons against the Islamic Republic threatens regional and global catastrophe.

 

Alexander SVARANTS – PhD in Politics, Professor, Specialist in Turkish Studies, Expert on Middle Eastern Countries

Politics In the Strait of Hormuz, Iran Is the Pretext—China Is the Target Salman Rafi Sheikh, April 21, 2026 The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, formally directed against Iran, in fact reflects a broader U.S. strategy to contain China through control over the key energy routes of the global economy. In the Strait of Hormuz, Iran Is the Pretext—China Is the Target The United States may say its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is about Iran. But the geography of oil—and the logic of power—suggest otherwise. What is unfolding in the Gulf is less a regional containment strategy and more of a calculated demonstration aimed at China: a reminder that the arteries of global energy remain vulnerable to American control. This blockade sums up the cardinal aim of the US war: disrupt China’s rise as a global superpower at all costs. Weaponization of Energy Flows The blockade is not just about stopping oil. It is about demonstrating that the infrastructures of globalization are not free and that they remain subject to the strategic control of the self-assured hegemon China absorbs around 90% of Iran’s oil. This oil passes through the Strait. If it stays closed, it will have a serious impact on the Chinese economy specifically and the global economy generally. That disruption is now underway. Following the collapse of US–Iran talks, Washington has imposed a naval blockade targeting vessels linked to Iranian ports, backed by thousands of troops and a large naval deployment. Within the first 24 hours, multiple ships were turned back, signaling both the credibility and enforceability of the operation. Oil markets reacted immediately, with prices surging amid fears of prolonged supply constraints. Formally, the objective is to pressure Tehran by cutting off its oil exports. But this framing is incomplete. The structure of global energy flows means that any sustained disruption in Hormuz disproportionately affects Asian consumers, not Western ones. In fact, an estimated 84% of crude passing through the strait is destined for Asian markets, with China alone accounting for a significant share. This is the critical point: the blockade operates on a geography that is far more central to China than to the United States. As a result, its strategic effects extend well beyond Iran. China’s Structural Vulnerability The immediate consequences of the crisis reveal the depth of China’s exposure. Prior to the conflict, the Middle East accounted for nearly half of China’s energy imports. Since the escalation, those flows have sharply declined, with crude imports from the region dropping by 28% in early 2026. Even with increased sourcing from Russia and Brazil, overall imports remain down, and substitution has proven partial at best. This is not simply a supply shock. It is the activation of a long-recognized structural weakness: China’s dependence on distant maritime energy routes that pass through vulnerable chokepoints. The “Malacca dilemma”—the fear that key sea lanes can be interdicted by a superior naval power—has long been central to Chinese strategic thinking. Hormuz now extends that vulnerability westward. At the diplomatic level, China has condemned the blockade as destabilizing and contrary to global interests, while simultaneously avoiding direct confrontation. The result is a cautious strategy of calibrated resistance: probing the limits of enforcement without triggering escalation. Yet this caution reflects asymmetry. The United States retains overwhelming naval dominance in the Gulf and, crucially, the capacity to regulate maritime access without engaging China directly. This allows Washington to impose costs on Beijing indirectly, including by targeting the infrastructures that sustain its economy rather than its territory. From Regional Conflict to Systemic Rivalry What makes the Hormuz blockade strategically significant is not merely its immediate economic impact but the broader logic it reveals. This is not simply a case of coercion against Iran. It is an instance of what might be called infrastructural power: the ability to control, disrupt, or reconfigure the flows—of energy, goods, and capital—upon which global systems depend. In this sense, the blockade functions as strategic signaling. It demonstrates that the United States can, at relatively low direct cost, threaten the circulation networks that underpin China’s rise. Indeed, there are indications that Washington’s pressure campaign extends beyond the maritime domain. Alongside the blockade, the Trump administration has floated punitive tariffs targeting countries—implicitly including China—suspected of supporting Iran, suggesting a broader strategy of multi-domain coercion. This aligns with a wider transformation in great-power competition. Rather than direct military confrontation, rivalry increasingly operates through the selective disruption of interdependence. Chokepoints like Hormuz become leverage points in a system where economic connectivity is both a source of strength and a vector of vulnerability. The risks of this strategy are considerable. Even limited enforcement actions—such as turning back vessels or inspecting cargo—carry the potential for escalation, particularly if they involve Chinese-linked shipping. A miscalculation at sea could quickly transform indirect pressure into direct confrontation. At the same time, the normalization of such tactics raises deeper questions about the future of globalization itself. If critical infrastructures can be weaponized at will, then the assumption of open and secure trade routes—the foundation of the global economy—begins to erode in ways that might make the disruption long-term, even if not permanent. A Crisis of Circulation The Strait of Hormuz crisis marks a shift in how power is exercised in the international system. It shows that control over territory is no longer sufficient; what matters increasingly is control over circulation—the ability to enable, restrict, or reroute the flows that sustain modern economies. In this emerging landscape, Iran is the immediate object of coercion. But China is the systemic target. The blockade is not just about stopping oil. It is about demonstrating that the infrastructures of globalization are not free and that they remain subject to the strategic control of the self-assured hegemon. For Beijing, the implications are stark. Diversification, overland corridors, and strategic reserves may mitigate some risks. But as long as its economic model depends on maritime energy flows through contested chokepoints lying close to regions long dominated by the US, its rise will remain exposed to precisely this kind of pressure. The lesson of Hormuz, then, is not confined to the Gulf. It is a warning about the future of global order: one in which interdependence no longer guarantees stability but instead becomes a terrain of contestation, where the most decisive battles are fought not over land, but over the routes that connect it. Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs Follow new articles on our Telegram channel

 

Politics

In the Strait of Hormuz, Iran Is the Pretext—China Is the Target

Salman Rafi Sheikh, April 21, 2026

The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, formally directed against Iran, in fact reflects a broader U.S. strategy to contain China through control over the key energy routes of the global economy.

The United States may say its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is about Iran. But the geography of oil—and the logic of power—suggest otherwise. What is unfolding in the Gulf is less a regional containment strategy and more of a calculated demonstration aimed at China: a reminder that the arteries of global energy remain vulnerable to American control. This blockade sums up the cardinal aim of the US war: disrupt China’s rise as a global superpower at all costs.

Weaponization of Energy Flows

The blockade is not just about stopping oil. It is about demonstrating that the infrastructures of globalization are not free and that they remain subject to the strategic control of the self-assured hegemon

China absorbs around 90% of Iran’s oil. This oil passes through the Strait. If it stays closed, it will have a serious impact on the Chinese economy specifically and the global economy generally. That disruption is now underway. Following the collapse of US–Iran talks, Washington has imposed a naval blockade targeting vessels linked to Iranian ports, backed by thousands of troops and a large naval deployment. Within the first 24 hours, multiple ships were turned back, signaling both the credibility and enforceability of the operation. Oil markets reacted immediately, with prices surging amid fears of prolonged supply constraints. Formally, the objective is to pressure Tehran by cutting off its oil exports. But this framing is incomplete. The structure of global energy flows means that any sustained disruption in Hormuz disproportionately affects Asian consumers, not Western ones. In fact, an estimated 84% of crude passing through the strait is destined for Asian markets, with China alone accounting for a significant share. This is the critical point: the blockade operates on a geography that is far more central to China than to the United States. As a result, its strategic effects extend well beyond Iran.

China’s Structural Vulnerability

The immediate consequences of the crisis reveal the depth of China’s exposure. Prior to the conflict, the Middle East accounted for nearly half of China’s energy imports. Since the escalation, those flows have sharply declined, with crude imports from the region dropping by 28% in early 2026. Even with increased sourcing from Russia and Brazil, overall imports remain down, and substitution has proven partial at best. This is not simply a supply shock. It is the activation of a long-recognized structural weakness: China’s dependence on distant maritime energy routes that pass through vulnerable chokepoints. The “Malacca dilemma”—the fear that key sea lanes can be interdicted by a superior naval power—has long been central to Chinese strategic thinking. Hormuz now extends that vulnerability westward.

At the diplomatic level, China has condemned the blockade as destabilizing and contrary to global interests, while simultaneously avoiding direct confrontation. The result is a cautious strategy of calibrated resistance: probing the limits of enforcement without triggering escalation. Yet this caution reflects asymmetry. The United States retains overwhelming naval dominance in the Gulf and, crucially, the capacity to regulate maritime access without engaging China directly. This allows Washington to impose costs on Beijing indirectly, including by targeting the infrastructures that sustain its economy rather than its territory.

From Regional Conflict to Systemic Rivalry

What makes the Hormuz blockade strategically significant is not merely its immediate economic impact but the broader logic it reveals. This is not simply a case of coercion against Iran. It is an instance of what might be called infrastructural power: the ability to control, disrupt, or reconfigure the flows—of energy, goods, and capital—upon which global systems depend.

In this sense, the blockade functions as strategic signaling. It demonstrates that the United States can, at relatively low direct cost, threaten the circulation networks that underpin China’s rise. Indeed, there are indications that Washington’s pressure campaign extends beyond the maritime domain. Alongside the blockade, the Trump administration has floated punitive tariffs targeting countries—implicitly including China—suspected of supporting Iran, suggesting a broader strategy of multi-domain coercion.

This aligns with a wider transformation in great-power competition. Rather than direct military confrontation, rivalry increasingly operates through the selective disruption of interdependence. Chokepoints like Hormuz become leverage points in a system where economic connectivity is both a source of strength and a vector of vulnerability.

The risks of this strategy are considerable. Even limited enforcement actions—such as turning back vessels or inspecting cargo—carry the potential for escalation, particularly if they involve Chinese-linked shipping. A miscalculation at sea could quickly transform indirect pressure into direct confrontation. At the same time, the normalization of such tactics raises deeper questions about the future of globalization itself. If critical infrastructures can be weaponized at will, then the assumption of open and secure trade routes—the foundation of the global economy—begins to erode in ways that might make the disruption long-term, even if not permanent.

A Crisis of Circulation

The Strait of Hormuz crisis marks a shift in how power is exercised in the international system. It shows that control over territory is no longer sufficient; what matters increasingly is control over circulation—the ability to enable, restrict, or reroute the flows that sustain modern economies.

In this emerging landscape, Iran is the immediate object of coercion. But China is the systemic target. The blockade is not just about stopping oil. It is about demonstrating that the infrastructures of globalization are not free and that they remain subject to the strategic control of the self-assured hegemon.

For Beijing, the implications are stark. Diversification, overland corridors, and strategic reserves may mitigate some risks. But as long as its economic model depends on maritime energy flows through contested chokepoints lying close to regions long dominated by the US, its rise will remain exposed to precisely this kind of pressure. The lesson of Hormuz, then, is not confined to the Gulf. It is a warning about the future of global order: one in which interdependence no longer guarantees stability but instead becomes a terrain of contestation, where the most decisive battles are fought not over land, but over the routes that connect it.

 

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs

Follow new articles on our Telegram channel

NEO: Trump seeks to gain control of the world's primary energy resources. Mohammed Amer: 03-04-2026

 

Economy

Donald Trump seeks to gain control of the world’s primary energy resources

Mohammed Amer, April 03, 2026

The struggle for resources is becoming an axis of confrontation worldwide: the US-Israeli aggression against Iran further underscores the validity of this thesis, exposing the vulnerability of the Arabs.

Some media outlets in the Global South have interpreted the start of the US-Israeli aggression against Iran – February 28, 2026 – as a rejection of the fundamental norms of international law and rules and a transition to an era of “the laws of the jungle.”

According to them, Trump’s implementation of the “America First” slogan effectively means that Washington will no longer spare its allies or friends.

American-Israeli aggression against Iran is disrupting supply chains not only for energy resources but also for fertilizers, which threatens to soar food prices

Some observers attribute the American president’s decision to launch a war with Israel against Iran to a desire to divert attention from the revelations about the pedophile James Epstein, the publication of which revealed the complicity of much of the Western elite in his criminal activities. Others are pushing the thesis that he took this reckless step under the influence of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Jewish lobby in the United States.

It’s quite possible that there’s some truth to these assertions, but if we analyze the Iranian campaign from the perspective of the US National Security Strategy, which emphasizes ensuring American dominance over resources, primarily energy, and countering the further growth of China’s power, it becomes clear that the war against Iran fits neatly into the main lines and intentions of this strategy.

First, most of Iran’s oil went to Beijing, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz limits the ability of both China and other Asian states to obtain oil from the Arab monarchies.

Second, the United States is becoming the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, so eliminating Qatar, the second-largest supplier of this gas to Europe and Asia, from global markets helps the Americans consolidate their dominance in energy markets.

Third, the war has led to a serious curtailment of the influence and power of the oil-exporting monarchies of the Persian Gulf – the region can no longer be considered a zone of stability and tranquility: the conclusion is that only the United States can truly ensure security for capital.

Much has been written recently about how the struggle for resources is becoming an axis of confrontation throughout the world: the American-Israeli aggression against Iran further underscores the validity of this thesis, revealing the vulnerability of the Arabs. The water issue is beginning to take on a new look, as this region of the world depends more than any other on desalination plants.

After the war ends, it will be necessary to take a fresh look at the main suppliers of energy resources, especially gas – the United States, Russia, Iran, and Qatar hold the leading reserves of this important fuel.

The possibility of a global economic crisis is becoming real

Bloomberg recently suggested that if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for a few more weeks, the price of oil could rise to $200 per barrel. Crude oil futures for June delivery are already trading around $115 per barrel. American-Israeli aggression against Iran is disrupting supply chains not only for energy resources but also for fertilizers, which threatens to soar food prices. Simply put, the world is heading toward a serious economic crisis.

In this regard, it’s worth recalling that Donald Trump began 2026 with an attack on Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest reserves of “black gold.” On March 29, in an interview with the Financial Times, Trump stated that he would like to “take Iran’s oil, following the Venezuelan scenario.”

In an interview with French television on March 26, Sergey Lavrov openly admitted for the first time that the United States wants to acquire the Russian gas pipelines Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2. Thus, the current actions of the American administration clearly align with the strategic guidelines proclaimed at the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidential term.

It is no coincidence that some observers, albeit cautiously, are suggesting that, in order to achieve these goals, Donald Trump, if he anticipates a crushing defeat for the Republicans in the November 3rd elections, may even resort to military action against Canada to seize its oil wealth. This would allow him to postpone or even cancel the upcoming election campaign and ensure the consolidation of his sole power. To achieve this goal, the American president will try to concentrate his domestic political efforts on combating his main adversary, the Democratic Party.

It is entirely reasonable to speculate in some Israeli newspapers that Trump is already looking to the post-war era when he declares, “Iran is dead, and America’s greatest enemy is the radical left-wing, extremely incompetent Democratic Party.”

 

Mohammed Amer, Syrian publicist, expert on current issues of global and regional politics

CounterPunch: War, Forever and a Day: Steve Fraser: 17-04-2026: ****************

 April 17, 2026

War, Forever and a Day

Steve Fraser

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Image by Birmingham Museums Trust.

War against Iran. Kidnapping the president of Venezuela. Threatening to take over Cuba and Greenland. Plans to plunder the planet of its land, labor, and vital resources to feed the insatiable appetite of American capitalism are indeed afoot and, in the age of Donald Trump, U.S. imperialism is back with a particular vengeance. Not, of course, that it ever went away. In fact, it’s been there from the beginning.

After all, the United States was launched as an act of settler colonialism, dispossessing the New World’s indigenous inhabitants. President James Monroe issued what became known as the “Monroe Doctrine” in 1823, proclaiming the country’s exclusive right to determine the fate of the rest of the western hemisphere. Meanwhile, the slave trade and slavery constituted an imperial rape of Africa by America’s planter and merchant elites.

And by the turn of the twentieth century, Washington had announced its “Open Door” policy, meaning it intended to compete for access to the world’s markets while joining the European race for colonies. It proceeded to do so by brutally taking over the Philippines in 1899, while the U.S. armed forces would make regular incursions into countries in Central America to protect the holdings of American corporations and banks. And the story that began there has never ended with bloody chapters written in Guatemala, Vietnam, most recently Iran, and all too many other places.

As the dispossession of indigenous populations and the enslavement of Africans suggest, the “homeland” (itself an imperial locution) has long been deeply implicated in the imperial project. Indeed, various forms of repressive military and police measures used abroad were first tested out against labor, Black, immigrant, and native insurgents. Rebellious immigrant workers in the nineteenth century were compared to “Indian savages” as local police and federal militia treated them with equal savagery. White supremacist ideology, nurtured at home, would then be exported to the global south to justify U.S. domination there. In fact, this country’s vaunted economic prosperity for so much of the last century was premised on its exploitative access to the resources of the global south, as well as its post-World War II hegemony over Western Europe.

Today, Donald Trump’s government exercises a reign of terror over our immigrant brothers and sisters, millions of whom are here because their homelands were economically despoiled by this country’s business and financial powerhouses. Homegrown resistance to our imperial adventures abroad has always been met by government repression, the stripping away of democratic rights, and the creation of a surveillance state.

In the Beginning

The United States was always conceived as an imperial project, its DNA infected from the outset.

The earliest settlers were simultaneously colonial subjects of the British and other European empires, and themselves colonizers exercising their dominion over indigenous populations. Native Americans — agrarian communities, hunting and trading tribes, seafaring and fishing societies — were systematically stripped of their lands, resources, and ways of life (not to speak of their actual lives) by the newly arrived settler colonials.

Sometimes their undoing was left to the silent workings of the marketplace. From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the fur trade catered to the appetites of the world’s aristocracy — in Russia, China, and across Europe. Native American fur-trapping and trading societies entered into commercial relations with fur merchants like John Jacob Astor, the country’s first millionaire. But the terms of trade were always profoundly unequal and eventually undermined the viability of those fur-trapping communities.

Often enough, however, the colonizers resorted to far less “pacific” kinds of actions: military force, legal legerdemain, illegal land seizures, and even bio-warfare, as European-borne diseases nearly wiped out whole indigenous populations. The social murder of those peoples went on through the nineteenth century, from “the Trail of Tears” (the forced removal of the “five civilized tribes” from Georgia in 1830 on the orders of President Andrew Jackson) to the massacre of the Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee in 1890.

Imagine the United States minus that historic erasure.

There’s no way, since the very geographic borders we take for granted would be utterly different. Much of this country’s most fertile land, crucial water resources, mineral-rich deposits, as well as the industries that grew up around them using buffalo hides for conveyer belts and horses to pull street-cars (not to speak of the oil wells that made certain Americans so rich drilling in territory that once had been part of the Comanche empire) would have remained outside the “homeland.” Where would America the Great have been then?

Less tangibly, but perhaps more essentially, without that emotional elixir, the sense of racial superiority that still poisons our collective bloodstream and helps justify our imperial brutality abroad, that sense of being perpetually at war with savages — President Trump only recently called Iran’s leaders “deranged scumbags,”— who knows what this country might have been.

Slavery and Manifest Destiny

Of course, slave labor disfigured the homeland for centuries, thanks initially to the transatlantic slave trade conducted by the imperial powers of Europe and eventually the United States. Shipowners, merchants, bankers, slave brokers, and planters, backed by the authority of the Constitution, grew extraordinarily wealthy by kidnapping and plundering African peoples.

Wealth accumulated in the slave trade or thanks to slavery found its way into industrial development, especially of the textile industries that powered the earliest stages of this country’s industrial revolution. We may fancy the notion that such a revolution was homegrown, a manifestation of a kind of native inventiveness, but factoring in the imperial assault on Africa makes the homeland’s vaunted industrial miracle seem less miraculous.

Territorial acquisition is often a hallmark of the imperial quest. And so it was in the case of this country’s expansion into the southwest and west, sometimes by purchasing land, but all too often by war. In fact, the seizure of a vast region that today stretches from Texas to California — sometimes referred to as the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) — was actually an invasion driven by the appetites of the slave owners of the American South for fresh lands to cultivate. Indeed, the most avaricious leaders of the Southern planter class wanted to take parts of Central America to extend the reach of the slave economy, as one imperial adventure whetted the appetite for another.

The phrase “Manifest Destiny,” the rubric deployed by American politicians to explain away their predatory behavior as something fated to be, remains part of an inbred American hubris. We, of course, make war and destroy only for the most idealistic motives: to save democracy, uplift the poor, hunt down demonic rulers, or bring the blessings of the American way of life to the benighted.

Exacerbated as well through the experience of conquest was a racialized ideology already deeply embedded in the country’s psyche. If, today, Donald Trump’s America is infected with an aversion to Latinos (not to mention African Americans), or immigrants of any non-White kind, look to the American imperial experience for its source. Earlier exercises in racism, including lynchings and church burnings in the Jim Crow South, became dress rehearsals for assaults on Muslims in our own moment of Trumpian paranoia.

Imperialism Without Colonies

Looked at from this vantage point, the American story turns out to be a serial exercise in imperial ambition. And yet, compared to its European competitors, the United States had precious few actual colonies.

True, after the Spanish-American War of 1898, it did run Cuba for a time, while establishing an unofficial protectorate over the Philippines (after waging a horrific counterinsurgency war there against a guerrilla independence movement). During that conflict U.S. forces mastered techniques — the establishment of concentration camps, for example — that they would deploy later against similar anti-colonial movements, particularly in Vietnam in the twentieth century.

Of course, the U.S. military also occupied various Central American nations — the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua, among other places — during the opening decades of the twentieth century, taking control of their government finances and so ensuring that they paid debts owed to American banks. That was the original version of what came to be known as “gunboat diplomacy” and is now being revisited. (Think of the recent capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife by the Trump administration.)W

At the beginning of the previous century, Secretary of State John Hay developed a different approach to establishing American imperial hegemony, something less haphazard than those semi-colonial one-offs. In 1899, he announced an “Open Door” policy which, on the face of it, seemed eminently fair. The United States claimed that it sought equal access to markets, particularly China’s, that had previously been carved into exclusive zones by the great European powers.

Opening that door eventually led to American global economic dominance, not counting the part of the world controlled for about 75 years by the Soviet Union (in parts of which China is now dominant). U.S. economic preeminence after World War II, backstopped by the world’s most powerful military machine, proved irresistible, while functionally Europe became something like an American colonial possession under the auspices of the Marshall Plan and NATO. That door, in other words, was opened wider than Hays had ever imagined.

Mind you, his imperial perspective was trained not only on the outside world but on the homeland as well. By the turn of the twentieth century, this country’s business and political elites were worried that the domestic market for America’s huge industrial and agricultural output was fast approaching exhaustion. Periodic and severe depressions in the last quarter of the nineteenth century seemed like evidence of that.

What was needed, key Washington strategists came to believe, was an “open door” for U.S. commodities and capital investment globally. Such a policy would, they believed, not only ensure American prosperity but also dampen the chronic class warfare between the haves and have-nots that had raged in this country throughout the Gilded Age, threatening the viability of American capitalism.

From the close of the Civil War to the end of the nineteenth century, many people believed that the United States had entered a “second civil war,” as the titans of industry (sometimes backed by the country’s armed forces) faced off against the mass strikes of working people and farmers trying to survive the ravages of a capitalist economy. Ever since then, this country would have been inconceivable without its various versions of “open door” imperialism to buoy up the home front and pacify the natives — that is, us.

Acting the role of the hegemon, while lucrative, is also expensive. Public money still pours into sustaining and enlarging the warfare state to ward off all challenges to American supremacy. (The Pentagon only recently, for instance, asked for another $200 billion for its war in Iran.) It does so at the expense of social welfare programs, while starving investment in productive activities like the development of alternative forms of energy and new infrastructure, housing, and rapid transit that would improve life for everyone.

At times, as in the case of the Vietnam War, the warfare state has engendered full-blown domestic economic crises. Vietnam led to punishing years of hyper-inflation followed by years of economic stagnation. Moreover, such war expenditures nearly collapsed the world’s financial system in 1968.

Today, we may be beginning to experience something similar as the global economy teeters on the edge of collapse thanks to Trump’s war on Iran.

Democracy and Imperialism

From the beginning, however, there was resistance to the homeland’s imperialism. Native peoples waged war. Slaves revolted. Mexicans became anti-imperialists. Abolitionists took on the slavocracy. The Spanish-American War elicited opposition from middle-class folk and public figures like Mark Twain. During World War I, thousands of anti-war radicals had their organizations raided and their newspapers shut down by government decree, while some were imprisoned and some deported. Similarly, government repression sought to quell the anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s, culminating in the killing of four Kent State students in 1970.

Democracy and civil liberties, thought to make up the essence of the homeland’s civic religion, can’t survive the imperial drive. Today, violations of the most basic rights to free speech, privacy, a fair trial, and the right to vote are appalling and commonplace. Immigrants, often here because they couldn’t survive the ravages of American capitalism in their homelands, are treated like outlaws. The most basic constitutional requirement — the exclusive right of Congress to declare war — is ignored with impunity (and had been long before Trump took over). The imperial state, the surveillance state, and the authoritarian state are hollowing out what’s left of the democratic state.

Imperialism does massive and fatal damage abroad. The wars in Gaza and Iran are the latest bloodbaths for all to see. Less visible are the wages of imperialism at home. An equation might clarify the historical record: The Imperium = land, labor, resources, power, and wealth. The Homeland = cultural brutalization, dispossession, fear, misogyny, racism, repression, slavery, tyranny, and war.

Donald Trump turns out to be a purveyor of both imperialism (notwithstanding his promises to “stop wars” and refrain from “forever wars”) and its toxic outcome. Conjoined in his person is the perfect amalgam of America’s imperial history of aggressive aggrandizement and the ubermensch cruelty that history has instilled in the American psyche.

This piece first appeared on TomDispatch.

Steve Fraser, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of the just-published Class Matters: The Strange Career of an American Delusion. His previous books include The Age of Acquiescence and The Limousine Liberal. He is a co-founder and co-editor of the American Empire Project.