Michael Hudson: Reflecting On The Unthinkable: Iran's Grand Plan To End The American Presence In The Middle East.
Iran and Donald Trump have explained why not fighting the current war to the end would simply lead to a new series of mutual attacks. Trump announced on March 6 that “there will be no agreement with Iran, except for unconditional surrender,” and announced that he must have a say in the appointment, or at least in the approval, of Iran's new leader, as he just did in Venezuela.
“If the US military is to completely defeat him and achieve regime change, or if not, go through this, and then in five years you will realize that you put in someone who is no better.” It will take at least that long for the United States to replace depleted weapons, rebuild its radar and related facilities, and launch a new war.
Iranian officials also acknowledge that American attacks will be repeated until the United States is expelled from the Middle East. After agreeing to a ceasefire last June, rather than press its advantage as Israeli and US regional missile defenses were exhausted, Iran understood that the war would resume as soon as the US could rearm its allies and military bases to resume what both sides recognize as a struggle for a definitive solution.
The war that began on February 28 can realistically be considered the formal start of World War III, since what is at stake are the conditions under which everyone will be able to buy oil and gas. Can they buy this energy from non-dollar currency exporters, led by Russia and Iran (and, until recently, Venezuela)? Will the current US demand to control international oil trade require oil-exporting countries to peg their oil in dollars and, in effect, recycle their export earnings and national savings into investments in US government securities, bonds and stocks?
This recycling of petrodollars has been the basis of the financialization and militarization of the global oil trade by the United States, and of its imperial strategy of isolating countries that refuse to adhere to the order established by the US government (without real rules, but simply ad hoc demands from the United States). Therefore, what is at stake is not only the American military presence in the Middle East, together with its two allied armies, Israel and the jihadists of ISIS/Al Qaeda. And the US and Israeli claim that Iran possesses atomic weapons of mass destruction is as fictitious an accusation as the one launched against Iraq in 2003 . What is at stake is the end of the Middle East's economic alliances with the United States and whether its revenues from oil exports will continue to accumulate in dollars to support the US balance of payments to finance its military bases around the world.
Iran has announced that it will fight to achieve three goals to prevent future wars. The first and most important is that the United States must withdraw from all its military bases in the Middle East. Iran has already destroyed the base of radar warning systems and air and missile defense sites in Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, preventing them from guiding US or Israeli missile attacks or attacking Iran. Arab countries that have US bases or facilities will be bombed if they are not abandoned.
The next two Iranian demands seem so momentous that they are unthinkable to the West. Arab OPEC countries must sever their close economic ties with the United States, starting with American data centers operated by Amazon, Microsoft and Google. And they must not only stop pricing their oil and gas in US dollars, but also divest from their current holdings of petrodollars, coming from US investments that have been subsidizing the US balance of payments since the 1974 agreements signed to gain US permission to quadruple the prices of their oil exports.
These three demands would end the economic power of the United States over the OPEC countries and, therefore, the world oil trade. The result would be to de-dollarize the world's oil trade and reorient it towards Asia and the countries of the Global Majority. Iran's plan implies not only a military and economic defeat for the United States, but also the end of the political character of the client monarchies of the Middle East and their relations with their Shiite citizens.
Step 1: Expel the United States from its military bases in the Middle East
The Iraqi parliament has continued to demand that US forces leave the country and stop stealing its oil (sending most of it to Israel). He just passed a new law ordering the departure of American forces. In a meeting with the senior advisor to the Iraqi Interior Minister and his accompanying military delegation in Tehran last Monday (March 2), Iranian Brigadier General Ali Abdollahi reiterated the demand that Iran has been making for the last five years, since Donald Trump shut down his first government on January 3, 2020, ordering the treasonous assassination of the two main Iranian and Iraqi counterterrorism negotiators, Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who sought to avoid open war. Given the continuation of the same policy by Trump, the Iranian commander declared: “The expulsion of the United States is the most important step towards the restoration of security and stability in the region.”
But all Arab kingdoms host American military bases. Iran has announced that any country that allows the use of these bases by US aircraft or other military forces will risk an immediate attack to destroy them. Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have already been attacked, prompting Saudi Arabia to promise Iran that it will not allow the US military to use its territory in part of its war.
Spain has prohibited the United States from using its airfields to support its war against Iran. But when his Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, prohibited the United States from using them, President Trump said in an Oval Office press conference that Spain could do nothing to prevent the US air force from using the facilities in Rota and Morón, in southern Spain, which both countries share, but which remain under Spanish command. «And now Spain has said that we cannot use its bases. And that's okay, we don't want to do it. We could use the base if we wanted. We could just fly up and use it; “No one is going to tell us not to use it.” After all, what would Spain do to avoid it? Shoot down the American plane?
This is the problem Arab monarchies face if they try to deny the United States access to their bases and airspace to combat Iran. What can they do?
Or, more specifically, what would they be willing to do? Iran insists that Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other Middle Eastern monarchies close all US military bases in their kingdoms and block US use of their airspace and airports as a condition of not bombing them and extending the war to the monarchical regimes themselves.
Refusal—or inability to prevent the United States from using bases in their countries—will lead Iran to force regime change. This would be easier in countries where Palestinians make up a large proportion of the workforce, such as Jordan. Iran has urged the Shiite populations of Jordan and other Near Eastern countries to overthrow their monarchies to free themselves from American control. There are rumors that the king of Bahrain has left the country.
Step #2: End Middle East trade and financial ties with the United States.
Arab monarchies are under increased pressure to meet Iran's fundamental demand to decouple their economies from the US. Since 1974, they have linked their economies to those of the United States. Recently, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia have attempted to use their energy resources to attract computer data centers, such as Starlink, and other systems associated with US regime change and military strikes against Iran.
Opposing US plans to closely integrate its non-oil sectors with Arab OPEC countries in the Middle East, Iran has announced that these facilities are “legitimate targets” in its attempt to expel the United States from the region. A cloud computing manager suggested that the Iranian attack on AWS against Amazon's data center was targeted because it met military needs, similar to how Starlink (whose funding interests the United Arab Emirates) was used in February in the US attempt to mobilize protests against the Iranian government.
Step #3: End recycling of OPEC oil exports into US dollar holdings
The most radical Iranian demand has been that its Arab neighbors de-dollarize their economies. This is key to preventing American companies from dominating their economies and, therefore, their governments. An Iranian official told CNN that Iran has accused companies that buy US government debt and invest in Treasury bonds of being complicit in the war against itself, considering them financiers of the war. «Tehran considers these companies and their managers in the region as legitimate targets. They are warned to declare the withdrawal of their capital as soon as possible.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar are considering withdrawing from US and other investments as the Iranian blockade of Hormuz has forced them to suspend oil and LNG production now that their storage capacity is full. Its income from energy, shipping and tourism has stopped. The Gulf States met on Sunday, March 8, to discuss withdrawing their US$2 trillion investments (mainly from Saudi Arabia). The threat is that this is a first step in diversifying OPEC investment beyond the US dollar.
Coupled with the US surrender of its military bases in the Middle East, such a decoupling from the dollar would significantly reduce US control over Middle East oil. It would end the United States' ability to use this oil trade as a bottleneck to force other countries to adhere to Trump's “America First” order (at its own whim, without clear rules).
For the monarchies themselves, the changes demanded by Iran to end the American war for control of the Middle East could have a similar effect to that of the aftermath of World War II that ended the era of European monarchies. In this case, they could end monarchical regimes in many countries whose economies and political alliances have been based on an alliance with the United States.
For starters, the pressure is now on Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, countries that have agreed to join Trump's Peace Board. Indonesia, with the world's largest Islamic population, has just withdrawn its offer to provide 8,000 soldiers for its “peace plan” in Gaza. And Iran is pressuring Arab monarchies to follow suit and withdraw in protest against US policy.
Will they do it? And will they go so far as to prevent US access to bases on their territory? If they try to avoid being offensive to the United States, they will open themselves up to Iranian accusations that they are not actually opposed to the war. But if they agree to Iran's request, they run the risk that the United States will simply confiscate or at least freeze their dollar reserves to force them to change their minds.
Iran is putting pressure on the most pro-US Arab monarchies. In recent days, the US has attacked two Saudi oil deposits, and a drone has hit a desalination plant in Bahrain in response to an attack launched from Bahraini territory against the Iranian desalination plant on the island of Qeshm. Most Arab kingdoms rely on desalination to a much higher degree, second only to Saudi Arabia at 70% and Bahrain at 60%. This makes the Bahrain attack similar to the madness of fighting with bricks while living in a glass house.
The collateral consequences of Iran's goal of expelling the United States from the Middle East
They will intensify as Israel and the US military deplete their air and missile defense stockpiles, allowing Iran to launch its full-scale attack on a scale it did not reach last June when it agreed to a ceasefire. It will begin using its most sophisticated missiles to attack Israel and other US allies.
There is nowhere to put additional Arab oil production now that Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz to all ships except its own, most of which carry oil bound for China. Storage tanks are full, with no place to store new production, which has been forced to stop. As for liquefied natural gas (LNG), mainly exported by Qatar, its LNG plants have been bombed. They will have to be rebuilt, which will take two weeks plus an equivalent time to get them back into operation by properly cooling the gas.
In any case, no ship even attempts to approach Hormuz because Lloyd's of London does not issue insurance policies. The US military has recently sunk or seized Russian ships carrying oil, but rising oil prices have led it to allow such transfers to curb global inflation. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has stated that the Treasury Department is examining whether more shipments of sanctioned Russian crude could be released to the market. “We could disallow other types of Russian oil,” he declared. “There are hundreds of millions of barrels of sanctioned crude in the water...by disallowing them, the Treasury can generate supply.” His remarks follow the US decision to issue a temporary 30-day waiver allowing Indian refiners to buy Russian oil in an effort to maintain global supply.
Around the world, rising oil and gas prices will force economies to choose between cutting domestic social spending to pay off their dollar debts. This war is separating the West, composed of the US and NATO, from the global majority, creating tensions that Japan, Korea and even Europe can no longer afford. The chaotic effect of the US attack has destroyed the narrative that has allowed US diplomats to demand subsidies and “burden sharing” for their global military spending. The fiction preached is that the world needs US military support to protect itself from Russia and China, and now Iran, as if these countries represent a real threat to Europe and Asia.
But rather than protecting the rest of the world by fighting the current Cold War, the chaos in global oil and gas markets resulting from its attack on Iran demonstrates that the United States is actually the greatest threat to the security, stability and prosperity of its allies. Their attack has fallen mainly on their closest allies: Japan, South Korea and Europe. Their gas prices have skyrocketed by 20% and continue to rise today. The Korean stock market has plummeted 18% in the last two days. All of this is changing support for the elimination of US control over Middle East oil and its reorientation towards a market free of US demands for control and dollarization of global energy trade.
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