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War On Iran: Energy War Moves From Disruption To Destruction
The war on Iran continues to be the most important issue currently moving the world.
Israel and the U.S. are continuing their assassination campaign of Iranian officials. It was confirmed today that Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, was killed by an Israeli airstrike on the house of his daughter. The strike caused several dozens of additional casualties. Larijani was a highly capable pragmatist, not a hardliner. His death is a loss for everyone who seeks peace in the Middle East.
Two of the leaders of the Iran’s voluntary Basji militia were also killed in Israeli airstrikes as was Iran’s Minister for Intelligence, Esmaeil Khatib.
None of these deaths will lower Iran’s will or capability to resist. It knows that it has is able to throttle the global economy via its control of the Strait of Hormuz and thus has the upper hand in any long term conflict. A some point the U.S. will have to agree (archived) with Iran’s end-of war conditions:
Iran’s strategic objective now is to impose such high costs on the United States and the Gulf states that Trump will opt for a cease-fire that includes a restriction on future Israeli actions. In essence, Iran wants to force him to choose between Israel’s security interests and the stability of global markets. The bottom line is that the war Trump started has no good ending.
Yet Israel today does not feel bound by any restrictions. It has just launched an attack, with U.S. backing, on Iran’s major South Pars gas field and other Iranian energy installations:
Israel has just bombed Iran’s largest natural gas processing facility in Bushehr Province. Israel stated that it conducted this attack in full coordination with the United States.
The attack is consistent with Israel’s strategy of aiming to destroy not only Iran’s military and military industries, but also its industrial base and its economy. Israel’s objective is not regime change but state collapse.
In this particular case there is I believe an additional motivation behind the Israeli attack. Iran has repeatedly indicated that if its energy infrastructure is attacked, this crosses a bright red line and that it will retaliate with attacks on energy infrastructure throughout the Persian Gulf.
If Iran does indeed respond in this manner, the prospects of direct participation in this war by Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states increases significantly. This is exactly what Israel would like to see, and would also explain why the US, which previously counseled against such attacks, now supports them and participates in their execution.
This attack is not only a demonstration of US-Israeli capabilities, but also of US-Israeli strategic failure and arguably of growing desperation as well.
Iran’s gas production is mostly used domestically. Its electricity production largely depends on its gas infrastructure. The strike is also a hit against Turkey which receives 15% of its gas consumption from Iran. Iraq will be hit hard too as its electricity production also depends on Iranian gas. A spokesman of the Foreign Ministry of Qatar condemned the attack.
The most rational response for Iran will be to hit Israel’s energy infrastructure. Strikes on Haifa and Israeli gas facilities will come too but Iran’s immediate response, as promised, were evacuation orders for five energy installation in its neighboring Persian Gulf countries:
🔸SAMREF Refinery – Saudi Arabia
🔸Al Hosn Gas Field – UAE
🔸Jubail Petrochemical Complex – Saudi Arabia
🔸Mesaieed Petrochemical Complex & Mesaieed Holding (Chevron-affiliated) – Qatar
🔸Ras Laffan Refinery (Phases 1 & 2) – Qatar.
According to Bloomberg the facilities are being evacuated. Energy prices in the commodity future market have risen in consequence of the strikes even though they are, due to manipulations, still much lower than real world prices (archived):
The growing disruption to supplies has driven a number of regional price benchmarks to all-time highs, even as global marker Brent has fallen back to just above $100 a barrel after jumping to nearly $120 in the early stages of the Iran war.
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The price of a barrel of oil in Oman — which exports from ports outside the Strait of Hormuz — soared to nearly $154 on Tuesday, driven by intense competition for the small volumes still leaving the Middle East.
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“Right now it feels like the paper and the physical market has dislocated,” said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank. “[This is] the biggest disruption since the 1970s and Brent can barely hold above $100.”
The $100bbl is for light sweet crude while the market needs heavier variants as well as processed products:
Current spot prices for gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel on the West Coast appear unhinged at $147/bbl; $162-$170/bbl; and $186/bbl until one considers that refiners in China, India, Japan and South Korea face physical crude costs that top $150-$155/bbl.
The strike on energy facilities in Iran has opened another level on the economic front of the war.
Blocking ship from passing Hormuz is disruptive. Striking energy facilities is destructive.
It will take a long time to repair the damage.
This is just my current opinion on the matter. I rarely if ever watch long YouTube or other videos of geopolitics “expert” talking heads. And I am open to entertaining tweaks based on new information or angles I may have missed.
The Zionist entity and its (illegal under properly applied FARA law) lobbying organizations and dual-loyalty US politicians, media moguls, FIRE sector and surveillance state (the greater realm of “social media”) managers call the shots in certain areas of policy and propaganda for the US, and through the effective vassal flow-down clause, the UK and EU. At the same time “Israel” serves as a node in the web that is treated as separate and unique in media, culture and among western government official stances – one that can be both blamed for atrocious behavior whose means sometimes achieve the same ends that the actors in consideration might benefit from.
Speaking for its representation in the factions/branches of the tripartite state in the US, the “establishment” would be content to have not waged kinetic war on Iran, and kept going with brutal sanctions and sabotage – leading to what they feel would be the eventual capitulation of the Iranians to Globo-Cap and full integration into the “western” managed global financial system. It was the Zionist elements and “Israel” that dictated the course of action here. “Israel” is the node in the web of Empire that thinks they will benefit from the rapid balkanization of Iran (ala Libya and Syria and Iraq – though as we have seen a significant number of people in Iraq are in too-close-for (Zionist)-comfort alliance with next-door Iran) and the weakening of their nearer neighbors – most of whom are already Empire vassals and ostensibly friendly to “Israel”, including as a result of the absolute joke “Abraham Accords.” “Greater Israel” is not just some fairy tale or wishful thinking in the twisted minds of the Zionists.
Some posit that “Israel” is often conveniently used by the leaders in the Imperial core as a scapegoat and rabid dog in the West Asia region, and this is true. But it does not mean that what Israel does there is always or even often in the best long-term interests of the non-Zionist elements of the Imperial core – and most definitely in the worst interests of the people who live in the metropole(s) of the Empire’s core. More on that in a second. But suffice it to say, that it also isn’t reasonable to say that “Israel” is merely a vassal state always subservient to the true masters of the “White Empire.”
The US, the US government and even much of the transnational Globo-Cap (including mega-media/social media) from which a substantial portion of the donor class arises, had nothing direct to gain, and in fact a lot to lose with the open Genocide in Gaza, yet stood by helping out while pretending to be helpless and occasionally allowing weak-kneed criticisms and even the eventual use of the very word “genocide” in semi-state affiliated media and in certain policy/influence circles . “Israel” would love to do the same to Iran as what has happened to Gaza, and which they are now doing to the West Bank, northern Syria and Lebanon, using their uniquely devious and barbarian (not to mention completely in violation of everything in the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions) approach to waging wars. Granted I didn’t say there was absolutely nothing to gain for the aforementioned “American” and EU interests, but it was confined to a small segment of the investor class and petro-chemical firms.
While “Israel” does not dictate everything to the US/UK/EU, but they do dictate some of it, and what they do dictate does benefit some here in the “west” – a section of a Venn diagram with overlap. A strong and united (but prostrate to Globo-Cap) Iran would be much more beneficial to most “western” elite interests when it comes to markets (large population), resources (duh), and more integration into a network made up of those who eventually seek to subdue or subsume China in the same manner.
And I mentioned I’d get back to the negative consequences Zionism and the seeming “control” by Israel is real and materially bad for citizens of the Empires metropoles (but good for statists and even fascists). For one thing, anti-Zionism has become incredibly accepted and popular, and in places with ostensibly strong protections for speech, against government surveillance, due process and the protection of “minority” rights, it became increasingly necessary for the Zionists to equate anti-“Israel” and anti-Zionism with “antisemitism.” Once that is accomplished, the powerful Zionist lobbies, mega-company owners, and rich, elite Zionists, working with the statist-fascist factions in the government and “industry” begin to both subvert and/or turn those freedoms and protections against the mechanisms of mass dissent. This benefits “Israel” through putting up roadblocks to peaceful protest and political policy making, benefits the neocon/neolib elements in the Imperial core, and it benefits the giant corporations and banks that make up Globo-Cap, which has increasingly integrated with those elements of the government AND which now have almost total control over what can be thought, said, shared and thus form highly popular bases for the creation of new policies (or upholding of old ones like….the Constitution) designed to put checks on surveillance, censorship, popular dissent and resulting legislation/government orders.
Does it matter that the Zionist factions in the Imperial metropoles and the “Israeli” Jews happen to truly believe that they are a superior form of human, or that in fact the rest of us “goyim” are not truly human at all? IMO it does, because when less than 2% of the plebiscite (the % is not coincidentally far higher among the elite 0.001%) effectively uniquely benefits from rules and norms that, as far as the rest of us go, exclusively benefit the top 0.001% – and in an age of unprecedented inequality, centralized and unaccountable powers of surveillance, systems of financial and personal control , “artificial intelligence”, and out-in-the-open government and corporate lawlessness, graft, corruption and normalized state sanctioned murder – Where the group that “Israel” represents and which represents “Israel” can eventually turn all of us into Gazans – to be treated as White Empire has always treated the Global South. And I don’t think that is what the (admittedly undemocratic, ever more unpopular) administrative state or state/local democracies truly want. Israel and the Zionist/Jewish Supremacists do.
/end of rant.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Mar 19 2026 3:29 utc | 522
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