N0 EXIT: There is nooooo wayyyyy outttt…
- Apr 2
- 9 min read
Bang goes the anvil, crash goes my head. Bang goes the anvil, crash goes my head, Bang, crash, bang, crash…..wait! I’ve got it!! How do we keep this casino from shutting off the lights?
By Jeff Berg
In a previous life I directed a version of Jean Paul Sartre’s ‘No Exit’. In the play Sartre illuminates his intuition that ‘Hell is other people’.
The three characters are doomed to an eternity of pain and torment that they will inflict upon each other because they cannot escape who they are. Estelle must have the attention and adoration of a man to believe she truly exists. Garcin must have the approbation of a person with integrity and intelligence in order to believe he is not craven. Inez is that person but needs the love of a woman to be whole.
This dynamic dooms them to a lifetime of hell and self-inflicted torment with No Exit.
This has been the recurring thought ringing in my head like a hammer to anvil as I try to think of a way around Iceberg Iran. Despairingly, all I hear after listening to — Mearsheimer, Sachs, Macgregor, the Duran, Luke Gromen, Doomberg, Alistair Crooke, Tarik Cyril Amar, Mike Hudson, Richard Wolff, et al — is Robert Newman’s voice from The History of Oil -- “There is nooooo wayyyyy outttt!”
The Americans have, somehow, managed to ensnare themselves in yet another forever war. This time not with a country of 23 million. Or 27 million. Or 37 million. Nope. This time with a country of 93 million.
Not with a country with a per capita income of $200. (Vietnam 1960) Or $250. (Afghanistan 2003) Or $900 (Iraq 2003). But with a country with the per capita PPP of $22,000.
So…..you dropped more ordnance on Vietnam than you dropped on Germany and Japan in WWII, and replaced the Vietnamese communists with the Vietnamese communists. Aka. You couldn’t defeat a country at war with itself.
You spent $14 trillion to replace the Taliban with the Taliban, and to replace Saddam who fought on your side against Iran, with an Iraq that just declared war on you.
After all that you thought, “Hey, I know! What if we just kill the Ayatollah and incinerate the IRCG’s kids!! That’ll be a winner.”
That ‘winning move’ after TWO Pearl Harbors and a 9/11!
What do I mean by that? Well, you see there’s this thing called perfidy. That’s when you attack someone without declaring war like the Japanese during Pearl Harbor. That however is the least perfidious perfidy. Worse still by far is if under the cover of negotiations or white flag you attack. Which the US has now done TWICE!!
In between those two perfidies they instigated a 9/11 sized attack. As with Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria, they used Jihadi Salafists, Marxist cultists, CIA/Mossad money and arms, mass murder pharmacology, and ISR, satellite reconnaissance. What we here in the West like to call ‘peaceful protests’. Goebbels, I shit you not, has got nothing on us. In some ways progress is linear. Violence is one of those ways.
But let us back to our No Exit problem. Iran, understandably, is a more than a little pissed. Simultaneously, they are country the size of Western Europe. With almost a 100 million people. A country that regularly finishes in the top 5 of the Math and Physics Olympiads. A country with the most women per capita with advanced degrees in the hard sciences.
Oh, and did I mention? Like Vietnam they have Russia and China in their corner to swab their wounds, keep them hydrated, and to assure them at war’s end they will be there to guarantee a path forward. This, understandably, stiffens resolve.
The Iran of today is part of a history that goes back thousands of years. They know their history. They know there will be ups, there will be downs. There will be times when they are oppressive, and times they are oppressed. That said, they also know this time round they are the oppressed. They are the aggrieved. They are the righteous.
There’s a reason Nelson Mandala revered the Ayatollah. Since 1979, Iran has supported those whose sovereignty is under attack. Be they secular communists, black African nationalists or Sunni Muslim Palestinians. Hardly the doctrinaire crazed mullahs they are portrayed as. Nope, those folks are our allies and now the government we installed in Syria.
Add to all to this they have understood 21st century war better than their enemy. What I called in an essay earlier this year, ‘Missiles Uber Alles’. As a result, they have wrested escalatory dominance from ‘the greatest military in the history of the world’.
This is crucial to understand. No matter how bad the US and Israel can make it for them, they can make it worse for the rest of the entire world. By choking off the Strait of Hormuz and threatening the viability of the Gulf nations, Iran can bring what has been built since the abrogation of Bretton Woods crashing down on all of our over indebted heads.
They knew going in that if the US pulled the trigger on this conflict, they, not Donald, would have the trump card. That trump card being what the Fremen had in Frank Herbert’s Dune. As Paul Atreides said to the Emperor. “The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it.”
As with ‘the spice’ the oil and gas must flow. Iran can destroy that thing and there is genuinely nothing the US can do about it.
Doomberg, the Green Chicken avatar, described evocatively the precision of Iranian missilery. In and amongst a dozen or so LNG ‘trains’ -- the Iranians picked out ‘trains’ four and six of the South Pars field. Those being the natural gas ‘trains’ owned by Chevron. This demonstration pointing out the now extremely obvious. They could do the same across the Gulf.
The spice would no longer flow.
In addition, as with the Fremen, water is even more fundamental, precious, sacred, to the Gulf nations. Iran has also thereby demonstrated that they could easily destroy the desalination plants that make the Gulf nations possible. Overnight 55 of 60 million people would have to go somewhere within a week. With them would go all the flows of energy. All the capital, all the wealth.
Kinda like a neutron bomb without the radiation.
The buildings would stand but the people would be gone.
This is, shall we say, leverage. The Iranian people have been under a sanctions regime more punishing than any since the age of the medieval siege. Now that they have the upper hand, what do you think the odds are that they will be the ones that relent?
Now we come to the hegemon. The superpower. A nuclear armed nation with 340 million people. A multi-trillion dollar military. The nation with a $87,000 GDP per capita. The energy gigapower. The ‘leader of the free world’. Oh, and the land of ‘The Donald’. How do they back down? How do they exit?
As far as the US Banks, Wall Street, Congress, Senate, President, TV, Hollywood and the Ellison’s are concerned, the US is all powerful. Sure they trade with other nations but that’s only out of the goodness of their heart. A generosity that has not been repaid. A generosity that has impoverished America.
It is now time for America to get what it deserves.
A double edged sword if ever there was one. ime for American power to ensure American interests. This is not a president that gets bogged down. See Tariffs, Panama, Venezuela, Cuba, Gaza and the 12 Day War. This is a president who strikes decisively and ‘Wins Bigly’.
And so he backs down, how exactly?
Into this not exactly propitious mix for diplomacy and off ramps we toss in Israel and her oligarchs. Then, lordy, lordy, we get to each sides ‘demands’. Aka. Their opening positions.
Iran: “Your military leaves the Gulf. You pay us reparations. We control the Strait of Hormuz.”
Donald: “I have 15 points and you only have 3, so I totally win! Plus I obliterated your Air Force and your Navy! I have the largest Air Force and the largest Navy in the HISTORY OF THE WORLD! Those are the rules! I didn’t make them, so you have to capitulate. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
To say there is little wiggle room between these two positions is like saying there’s not much to do about commuting the prisoner’s sentence after the guillotine drops. This is where I have been. Now that we’re in, how do we get out?
Preferably before the blade drops. I say ‘we’ because after the attack my country put sanctions on Iran. I say we because our dear leader said he supported the bombing, “With regret.” So I keep going round and round and round in the circle game from hell.
How do we keep this casino from shutting off the lights?
How do we keep the roulette wheel spinning?
How do we prevent the markets from seizing up? I am stuck imagining an American Estelle, a Jewish Garcin, and an Iranian Inez. Pi is more easily resolved.
We all see the looming iceberg, the good ship Globalization at full steam, oil and gas the actual Twin Towers, and “No way out!” The American oligarchs can’t/won’t back down. The hegemon can’t/won’t back down.
The Donald can’t/won’t back down.
Iran however has the upper hand in a way that it may never again. That, after being tormented for 47 years. Hell, 73 years. After two Pearl Harbors, a 9/11, and an “Epstein Class elementary schoolgirl auto de fe”.
So not exactly reaching for the hand brake.
Bang goes the anvil, crash goes my head. Bang goes the anvil, crash goes my head, Bang, crash, bang, crash…..wait! I’ve got it!!
I present to you besieged World a way out of this US imposed prisoner’s dilemma. This imposed hell of other people and their choices. Our Emergency Exit from this 17 alarm fire.
The problem is the solution. The problem is that the US is in charge.
Only by taking the steering wheel away can we avoid this crash. Only by absenting these shareholders from the meeting can we chart a different course, Only by cutting up the US credit card can we stop them from doubling down on another roll.
We see the iceberg, we don’t have to hit it. This CEO does not have the majority of the shares. The World does. They are called US treasuries. It’s past time to tell the US and the Donald to take a seat. Your room is comped and the massages are included. Have a mint julep on the house, and we’ll get back to you when the all-you-can eat sliders bar is open, and the votes have been counted.
That my friends is the only answer I see. We, the many, have to pressure our leaders to locate their spines and stand up to ‘Daddy’. NOW, en masse, every day until it’s done.
The US bond market needs to be nuked before Iran is. The only thing the Congress, the ‘Banksters’ and the Street, understand is threatening their money. The US needs to have their credit revoked until they are out of the Gulf. Until they realize that if they want something, like the rest of us, they should pay for it, not bomb for it.
The Gulf. That energy, those molecules, are far too precious to ever be risked for any reason, much less risked for the ayahuasca pipe dream of Eretz Israel. Jeff Sachs is fond of pointing out that the US is not even 5% of the world’s population. Israel is the population of the Greater Toronto Area for Yaweh’s sake, and we’ve never been mistaken for a hegemon.
There is no other way to bridge the divide between US power and Iranian leverage. This Emperor has met his Muad’Dib. The power to destroy a thing is absolute control of that thing. If we do not take action and succeed, the US may well decide that they would rather destroy that thing than allow anyone else to have it.
The consequence of failure is billions faced with starvation.
Mass migration.
A global economic collapse that makes 1929 look like a bad weekend at Vegas.
We, the people, our leaders, and their US treasuries, had better make their voices heard and very, very soon. At this rate I’d say at the latest we have until, ‘Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!’
Easy? Not so much. But about 15 orders of magnitude easier than the alternative.
Jeff Berg co-founded and helped run an energy and environmental NGO in Toronto from 2003 to 2014. "We brought in experts on these twin issues and hosted exactly 100 talks. After the election of Rob Ford we collectively decided, 'So long and thanks for all the fish.' "
Courtesy countercurrents.org
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