CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Trump’s Casino Royale: The Iran War

Photograph Source: Tom in NYC – CC BY 2.0

Given that Donald Trump conceives of the presidency as a casino—why else would he be trying to makeover the White House to look like the Bellagio?—it makes sense that his administration has turned the war with Iran into an insider-trading scheme.

It used to be that wars were fought to make “the world safe for democracy” or “to end all wars” (a World War I expression), but now wars are fought so that Trump insiders can get rich quick in prediction markets or to help the president’s family (and its remittance men) corner the Persian Gulf oil market.

Part of the reason why the war is lingering in the Persian Gulf is that several sides in the conflict—in particular the United States and Iran—have an interest in high-priced oil, which may explain why Iran is blockading the Strait of Hormuz, and the Trump administration is blockading Iran. Make that win-win kaching sound.

I realize that at the start of the war, Trump was babbling on in his midnight posts about regime change in Iran and shutting off its access to enriched uranium, but those declarations of war were always just investment smoke-screens, as talking up oil at $100-a-barrel would hardly work to win many seats in the mid-term elections.

That said, Trump’s only interest in public office is to cash in his chips, not to help some drudge of a congressman win in Missouri’s fifth district.

Trump’s mercantilism goes something like this: in exchange for the oil-exporting states (Saudi Arabia, all those friendly Gulf sheikdoms, etc.) tipping billions into his family companies, Trump does his insane best to drive the price of oil over $100-a-barrel by turning the Persian Gulf into a shooting gallery.

It may not be the cleanest of transactions, but you cannot argue with the bottom line if you’re sitting on a country full of oil (something Trump shares with many oligarchic cronies, including the Saudis and Vladimir Putin ).

Left to its own devices, the oil market would probably find equilibrium around $18-a-barrel, which explains Trump’s sudden interest in fighting a war in the Persian Gulf (to get Iran to agree what it........

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