It is Wednesday, March 18, as I write: Coming up to three weeks into what U.S. President Donald Trump was confident—and said so—would be a four-day war that would be over by the Jewish festival of Purim on March 3.
Well, the war did not end on March 3 and on this Ides (15th) of March (for those who remember Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”) it had not ended yet: There are no signs it is going to do so in the very unforeseeable future that looms ahead.
Instead, it is very clear that, so far, Iran is winning.
For the Strait of Hormuz has been closed and there is no foreseeable sign or indication if or when the U.S. Navy can reopen it. An estimated 3,200 ships are now backed up.
The regular flow of 20% of the world’s global oil production has been stopped dead in its tracks.
Even worse, the flow of 30% of global urea production has been stopped dead in its tracks. Urea is crucial to the production of powerful artificial chemical fertilizer under the Haber-Bosch process. And those fertilizers are absolutely essential for the growth of the miracle fast-reproducing strains of grain and rice developed by the great American agronomist Norman Borlaug 60 years ago.
Today, the global population stands at 8.3 billion, 40 percent of whom—more than 3.3 billion people—are absolutely dependent on the basic food staples grown by fertilizers produced by the Haber-Bosch process.
As noted, U.S. strategist and commentator Colonel Larry Johnson warned on the “Capitals Uncovered” podcast hosted by Anglo-Swedish journalist Pelle Neroth-Taylor and me last week, unless that fertilizer flow is rapidly restored, global grains and rice production will collapse catastrophically by the end of this year, and global famine on an unprecedented scale will threaten.
Previous U.S. administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, took such dangers very seriously indeed. In the early 1990s, then-President George Herbert Walker Bush gave the utmost priority to an initiative spearheaded energetically by his own vice president—the shamefully sneered at and underestimated Dan Quayle—to bring famine relief to the peoples of southern Africa following a serious, record-breaking drought south of the Zambezi River.
The initiative was a success and an estimated 19 million people were saved from starvation. But what a contrast to the insouciance with which President Trump and his Secretary of Defense—sorry we are meant to call him Secretary of War now, as if that will improve U.S. capabilities by one fingernail—Pete Hegseth.
Trump has just airily announced his commitment to flattening the oil refining facilities on Kharg, or Khark Island 300 miles north of the Strait of Hormuz. Such a move will obviously further enrage the Iranians and be a looming catastrophe for both China and India.
Just three weeks ago, Trump and the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu were celebrating Indian Prime Minister Nahendra Modi effectively bringing giant India, which now claims to be the most populous nation in the world, out of the BRICS—Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa combination.
The catastrophe of losing the regular outflow of Persian Gulf oil, which accounts for 50% of the annual energy and fertilizer/food production needs for India’s 1.3 billion people, could drive India, at the very least, back into BRICS and into intensified cooperation with the Russia-and China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Or it could lead to an enormous political and economic convulsion across the subcontinent which will bring back to power the Indian National Congress (INC) party..
Meanwhile, only two weeks into what was supposed to have been that four-day war, reports indicate that Iran has already wrecked, or at least damaged major U.S. military bases in the Middle East.
Here again we see that the decisions to inflict a war of aggression on Iran, wildly bomb the great city of Tehran and deliberately target and assassinate the supreme religious and political leader of the nation, have produced precisely the opposite results from those Trump, Hegseth and Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio expected and planned.
Far from bringing Iran to heel and consequently enabling U.S. domestic oil prices to plummet to historic lows as they clearly expected and imagined, global oil prices are now soaring, as I write, toward $100 a barrel and $200 a barrel is not at all inconceivable.
Forget winning the November mid-terms, Mr. President.
Instead of renewing U.S. dominance over the Middle East in the face of the rising challenge of Russia and China, Trump and his geniuses have already ceded control and protection of the region to these two formidable powers—both of which strongly support Iran.
Third, far from protecting and saving Israel, Trump and his team, heeding Netanyahu’s crazed insistence on totally destroying the Islamic Republic, have inflicted the worst strategic defeat in the 79-year-history of the Jewish state.
As Theodore Postol, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and International Security, pointed out on the “Capitals Uncovered” podcast last week, the Jordan- and Qatar-based radars vital for missile defense in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Israel have all been damaged.
All major U.S. bases in the Gulf are being damaged. At least one of them is totally out of anti-missile interceptors. Israel’s air defenses against missiles over Tel Aviv are useless without them. And this explains why Israel has shut down all private and independent video feeds out of the country showing the Tel Aviv skyline.
Indeed, according to Professor Postol, where the Israelis claimed to be shooting down 87% of incoming Iranian missiles, they in reality were only hitting 5% of them.
The Israeli government has announced an unprecedented national news blackout. Live podcast videos of the Tel Aviv skyline under attack have been totally banned.
Indeed, it is clear both the U.S. and Israeli governments do not have a clue what to do.
Another dangerous and ludicrously false myth is held by both rabid anti-Semites and passionate pro-Israel Netanyahu worshippers alike: It is that the Israeli government and military leadership are brilliant, all-powerful, resourceful, commanding and manipulative.
Manipulative in the short term they have certainly been toward Trump: But their only clear strategic conception is to run to America to bail them out every time.
Mossad chief David Barnea rose to his position by being an advocate of assassinations as the only cure—all for every strategic problem. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir never even did any basic service in the Israeli Army. He was prevented from serving at age 18 because he already had a record as an extremist at the time.
Such people can strut and look good in 20-second sound bites on Fox News. But of common sense, integrity and basic responsibility there is none—and beyond their crisp sound bites they could not sell a used car or a fresh hamburger.
With such gods of clay reigning in both Washington and Tel Aviv, it scarcely matters who runs Iran, or how often the U.S. and Israel manage to kill more of their leaders. The vacuum in leadership in both America and Israel is palpable. The great Sun Tzu himself would have had no doubt in predicting what the inevitable outcome would be.
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About the Author
Martin Sieff is former Chief Foreign Correspondent for The Washington Times and former Managing Editor, International Affairs and Chief News Analyst for United Press International.
He has been nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
Professor Sieff is also the author of seven published books including “Cycles of Change: The Patterns of US History from Thomas Jefferson to Barack Obama” and “Gathering Storm: The Seventh Era of American History & the Coming Crises That Will Lead to it.”
Currently, Martin is the co-host of Capitals Uncovered podcast with Anglo-Swedish journalist Pelle Neroth-Taylor.
Martin can be reached at martinsieff1@gmail.com.
