US President Donald Trump may have finally found a way out of the war he started with Iran. No, it doesn’t come close to regime change, which was one of the Trump administration’s initial justifications for the war. There isn’t even a return of political prisoners, constraints on the country’s proxy forces in the Middle East or an end to its ballistic missile program. Instead, it will involve billions of dollars in sanctions relief and direct payments to Iran — far bigger than the ones he spent years mocking the Obama administration for making. Oh, and Iran has effectively implemented a de-facto carbon tax on every barrel that moves through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s political allies in the United States, Israel and especially the oil and gas industry must be tired of all the winning by now. 

That’s because the biggest winner of all in this embarrassing excuse for a war is pretty clearly China. Trump’s military blundering in the Middle East will have economic repercussions that ripple outward for years, even if the 60-day negotiating period produces a lasting peace. And those waves will eventually arrive at our shores here in Canada. Countries that import oil and gas — which is to say, almost all of them, especially in the parts of the world where demand is supposed to grow — are re-assessing their reliance on an increasingly unreliable product. And while Canada may look like a comparative source of calm and reliability compared to Iran or even the United States right now, we’re still in the same fundamental business of........

© National Observer