214D. Gulf War Economic and Military Motivations

All three major parties are very transparent about their goals, making this a fairly straight forward analysis.

I am writing this as the fourth paper in this series because the scenario is complicated by there being strong historic, religious, and political motivations. I explained the historic, religious, and political factors in the first three papers in order to simplify this analysis and in the next paper I will predict where this is all heading.

USA Economic Goals

The primary economic goal for the USA is control of a majority of the oil assets globally. This has been their goal since right after WW2. The formation of Israel in ~1948 was intended to allow force projection into the Gulf via a friendly proxy.

By understanding where the “available” (conquerable) oil reserves are, the picture gets very clear:

• Iran (1953 + 2026), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), and Venezuela (2026) have been invaded by the USA, often with help from allies. In all cases a puppet ruler was installed to establish a Colony (C). Iran liberated themselves in 1979 and the USA had plans to invade again after they pacified Iraq. That took longer than they expected.

• Saudi Arabia (1946), UAE (~2000), and Kuwait (1999) agreed to allow themselves to become Proxies with Military Bases (PB) in order to avoid being invaded or otherwise subjected to regime change.

• Russia has been a strategic opponent since 1918, with a very brief alliance during WW2.

• Canada has no USA military bases, and does not possess any nuclear weapons. Thus they have been declared a military target by the current USA administration in order to pressure them into annexation (as “the 51st state”).

I assume all my readers already understood that a long term strategic goal of the USA has been to control all major oil reserves outside of Russia, since WW2. Here I’m making the situation a bit more clear and demonstrating how close the USA is to achieving that goal militarily.

If we look at oil production instead of reserves, then the situation becomes even more clear:

Venezuela, despite having the world’s largest reserves, doesn’t even produce in the top 10 due to long standing embargoes from the USA, and sanctions meant to cripple their economy and destabilize the country politically. Here you can see the USA is by far the world’s largest oil producer. But their reserves are almost depleted (they’ve used a lot of oil over the years).

The faster the USA “produces” oil, the faster their reserves deplete. They will be the first country on either of these lists to run out of oil. Of course production isn’t a binary, as reserves go down the cost per barrel to extract will go up. Very soon the USA’s economy will be crippled unless they can secure enough foreign supplies to make up for the looming deficit.

The obvious target to solve that problem is Venezuela since it is within their sphere of influence. Venezuela has increasingly been selling to China since 2005. Invading Venezuela was necessary to block the flow to China and to establish control to begin diverting and expanding their production to the USA.

Gulf oil primarily goes to Asia. Prior to the second Russian invasion of Ukraine, Europe got most of their oil from Russia. The shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz harms all of Asia (including Australia and Japan), but especially China. Trump has made it clear that he believes it benefits him to have the Strait closed, so he’s not in any particular hurry to secure it. Or, at least that it being closed hurts China a lot more than the USA, so it is a net positive.

The animosity to China is aggravated by their collapsing thousands of rare earth supply chains. Shutting down Hormuz isn’t exactly a fumble on the part of the USA. They intend to trade access to oil for access to rare earths. But of course this depends on the USA re-establishing control of the Strait.

Ultimately the current administration, like all previous administrations, sees strategic control of the Gulf as a core economic and military doctrine. Militarization of Israel and the Proxy bases in other Gulf states are all part of that doctrine.

USA+Israeli Secondary Economic Goals

The USA is keen to develop military applications of AI. This requires testing on live targets, preferably targets that resist somewhat. Palantir’s “automated kill chain” tech allows the USA and Israel to hit thousands of targets, a feat that would not be possible if they had to be selected manually by humans.

The AI is ordered to attack anything that might have military value. Sometimes it gets confused by words in Farsi that are on the kill chain list of words. This is why all those children and at least one empty park were bombed into oblivion. A human is given a list of targets by the AI, and they are supposed to confirm them before the automation starts killing people. In reality, that’s just too much work so the operators hit the “Accept All” button. The convenience just outweighs any potential political costs.

Israel is also heavily involved in military AI development and similarly benefits from live fire testing on human subjects. Regular weapons testing has been going on in the region for decades but AI weapon tech is far more lucrative.

Israeli Primary Economic Goals

Israeli administration is looking to annex, develop, and ultimately sell as much real estate as possible…

[As I write these papers, I’ve been doing a LOT of math in my head in the background. It is at this very moment in my writing that it hits me like a lightning bolt. A massive surge of euphoria (because I love these mathematical moments when the Universe talks to me) and dread. It’s very tempting for me to think that some of the “smartest” people on Earth are actually pretty dumb. But we all have this hidden fantasy. That’s why when I’m truly threatened, I play dumb. It always works because people secretly fantasize that I’m as stupid as I am smart. What if the people starting this war really aren’t as dumb as they look? What if this War wasn’t at all what it looks like?

I’ve been assuming that this is all happening at once because an old man is in the last year of his life and is being exploited because…he’s easy to exploit and the window of opportunity is closing quickly. That still might be true, but what’s going on in the background is so much more horrible and brilliant at the same time.

With your permission, dear reader, I’m going to grab the steering wheel firmly and crank it hard to the left. I’m going to wrap this up faster than I expected so I can explain in the next paper.]

I’m feeling comfortable in the thought that the economics here aren’t as dumb as they appear, and this is not about land per se. I’m going to stop talking about economics here, and get to the military situation. Then I will get right into explaining my brainstorm in the next paper.

Let’s Get Militaristic

Proxy Traps: Ukraine

When I saw the West training and arming Ukraine after the first Crimean invasion by Russia, I thought to myself “This is an obvious trap. Could Putin really be dumb enough to fall into it?” I didn’t have to wait long to get my answer. Putin rushed right in and set off the trap. If he could have pulled out, he would have already. But he knows that if he does he’s going to end up taking one of those famous Russian Balcony Dives.

As a military historian, it is mind blowing when you look at the world’s military tech level in 1945 and compare it to what we had in 1939. Humans can be very industrious when they are threatened with extinction. If anything, time-tech is compressing due to AI. We can discover more in less time.

NATO and Ukraine recently (and very quietly) did a little secret war game. One modern NATO frigate versus (1?) Ukrainian Unmanned Maritime System (UMS). I don’t know the details on the UMS, only that it exists now. Five battles were run, and the Frigate lost each time. The Frigate was totally helpless. Such a frigate costs almost 3 billion USD and has between 100 and 180 crew.

Gone. Annihilated.

You probably heard that Trump went to Zalinski and begged him for help against Iran. It sounds funny, especially given how Trump humiliated Zalinski with his “you have no cards” talking down. But so much money flowed into the Proxy Trap that Ukraine is now arguably the world’s most advanced military.

Proxy Traps: Iran

The USA and Israel haven’t been very good at hiding their goals in the Middle East. The West may have had 8+ years to set up the Ukraine Proxy Trap, but Russia and China have had 20+ years to set up the Iran Proxy Trap. And the USA and Israel just walked right into it, like the Fool from the Tarot card.

Venezuela was just so easy that who could resist the Iran honey (Proxy) Trap? As of this week, it is now apparent that while Ukraine has the world’s most advanced drones, Iran might have the world’s most advanced hypersonic missiles.

We know Russia has had hypersonic missiles for a while. Russia’s most powerful weapon against Ukraine has been their “glide bombs”. They are very inexpensive and allow Russia to bomb Ukraine with super heavy ordnance from safe distances. You just target it and let it go and it “glides” at high speed to the target. And of course Russia has the satellite tech to very precisely target their bombs.

Consider Iran’s Fattah-2:

• Hypersonic with a cruise speed of Mach 15. 3 miles (4.5 km) per second.

• Uses a “glide” mechanism

• Extremely Precise

• Can use single or multiple warheads

This thing has “Russia quietly helped us out a bit” written all over it. Until 2 weeks ago, the West seemed to assume it was mythological. It is unknown how many they have and how fast they build them. What we do know is that Israel radar locked it and fired 10 Arrow-3 interceptors at it and Fattah-2 was too fast to be intercepted. Arrow-3’s cost ~3 million dollars each, so $30M was shot into the sky with zero effect. Presumably the targets are only the highest value, and I’m hearing all sorts of rumors as to what those were but no confirmation yet. Of course we know that the USA lost their $1.1B AN/FPS-132 Block 5 Upgraded Early Warning Radar (UEWR) located in Qatar (the country that is now regretting giving Trump the $400M personal jet). Without it, the ability to intercept or even see ballistic missiles is severely reduced.

We know that the USA has pulled back all of their aircraft carriers. It would seem that Fattah-2 could take one out. If it hasn’t been used for this yet, that would indicate some restraint on the part of the Iranians. The USS Abraham Lincoln reportedly came under fire at the start of the war and retreated, which seemed odd at the time. It has a crew of over 5000 highly trained personnel.

Iran has been making a LOT of Shahed drones for Russia, and clearly they were paid with more than money. After all their diplomats were vaporized right in the middle of talks, Iran has said there will be no diplomacy and is daring the USA to land ground troops. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more defences there than what is obvious.

Pete Hegseth has said publicly that he believes the new leader of Iran was caught in the strike that killed his father and “must be crippled”. Strong rumors suggest he was promptly flown to Russia for emergency medical care, which is itself a complication.

The USA seems VERY keen to negotiate now, but Israel will not allow that and blows up anyone in Iran that could be qualified to engage in diplomacy to make sure that doesn’t happen. The USA is even removing restrictions on Russia selling oil, so things are looking up for the Russian economy.

I would expect that Russia will help Iran as long as the West is helping Ukraine. This is tit for tat, and both wars could easily go on for 5 plus years. Any deal would likely require both wars to end at the same time, and Iran would require the USA to remove all of their Gulf military bases.

There is one big wildcard in play…

China

Closing the Strait of Hormuz harms a lot of countries, but especially those in Asia and Australia. Supplies of oil, naphtha, and urea are going to run critically low. Naphtha is used to make plastics and urea is used to make food. The country most harmed by a shutdown of the Strait, if it lasts beyond their 4 month strategic reserve duration, would be China.

China would be more than happy to bog the USA down in a Proxy War in Iran. I would expect an almost unlimited amount of help to be heading to Iran soon, just as in the Korean and Vietnam Proxy Wars. The USA didn’t win either of those wars.

The threat of a Taiwan invasion, which I previously predicted to happen by 2028, just got a lot greater. With the USA’s supply of missiles rapidly approaching zero, there wouldn’t be much that the USA could do to stop it now.

Thus despite all the excitement in the Gulf, China is really the country to watch right now. I can’t predict their exact next move yet, but if the Strait stays closed much longer then China will have to mobilize. I already consider this to be World War 3, but if China mobilizes then it becomes official.

Thanks to Israel vaporizing all the Iranian leadership and diplomats, there is close to zero chance of de-escalation in the next year. This is, of course, totally intentional. Israel seeks to be the unchallenged super power in the Middle East and Iran is the only country in the way of that becoming reality. The cost to Israel of making that happen is a lot lower if the cost is paid for by the USA.

The only good news that I can think of here is that since the Middle East is so strategically valuable, a nuclear exchange would cause unacceptable levels of fallout across the region. This is the main thing giving the nuclear powers in the region pause, they don’t seem too concerned about civilian casualties and the land is very valuable in its current unirradiated state.