Before Going on to the post below, note this except from US Congress' Joint Economic Committee's Report Iran's Oil and Gas Wealth:
Fifty-six percent of Iran’s oil exports are to Asia and 29 percent to Europe. Japan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) together buy over one-third of Iran’s oil exports. The U.S. buys no oil from Iran (other than specially licensed swaps for Caspian oil).
In other word, as of 2006, most of Iran's oil was going to major powers who were US creditors, trade partners,economic competitors, military allies, or some combination thereof. And the push for sanctions affects them all in different ways, adding to the risk inherent in anything we do.
Proof from today's headlines:
Montreal Gazzette
Iran warned Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to rethink an offer to make up for oil lost to world markets as a result of threatened curbs on its exports, as diplomats said an EU embargo may be in force by July.Bloomberg BusinessweekForeign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi urged Riyadh to "reflect" on its pledge to use its spare capacity to compensate for any reduction in Iran's oil sales that results from U.S.-led efforts to tighten sanctions over the Islamic republic's controversial nuclear program.
Salehi said the Saudi offer was "not friendly."
In a boost to Iran's efforts to protect its key oil sector, its second-biggest client, India, said it had no plans to curtail purchases.
"We continue to buy oil from Iran," Indian Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai said in New Delhi....
Meanwhile, ahead of a key meeting on Monday, diplomats in Brussels said the European Union could have an embargo on Iranian oil imports in force by July, as a compromise took shape between champions of tougher sanctions and member states that rely heavily on purchases from Iran....
Some member states wanted an earlier, three-month deadline, whereas financially stressed nations that rely on Iranian crude - notably Greece, Italy and Spain - wanted up to a year....
Last week, U.S. ally Japan appeared to backtrack on a pledge to cut its imports from Iran, while China has refused to bow to U.S. pressure.
Oil Trades Near Three-Day High as Iran Tension Counters Economy
Saudi Arabia can “easily” boost crude production to as much as 11.8 million barrels a day to offset a shortfall from Iran, Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said in an interview with CNN on Jan. 16. The kingdom has the capacity to produce 12.5 million barrels a day and pumps about 9.8 million, he said.
“If this comment is the official stance of Saudi Arabia we advise Saudi officials to be more wise and responsible in their approach,” Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said yesterday, according to the state-run Fars news agency.
European Union foreign ministers are scheduled to meet Jan. 23 to decide on proposed sanctions on Iran’s oil imports, in a bid to halt its nuclear program...
...The global economy will grow 2.5 percent this year, down from a June estimate of 3.6 percent, according to the World Bank. Turmoil in Europe has the potential to trigger a financial crisis reminiscent of 2008, the Washington-based institution said.
Washington Post 1/18/2012
Japan finance minister concerned about effectiveness of sanctions on Iran, impact on banks
Japan has given mixed signals on the sanctions. Azumi declared last week that Japan would move quickly to reduce its oil imports from Iran after meeting with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, but other officials including the prime minister have said economic implications need to be considered.Azumi also struck a more cautious tone Wednesday, telling journalists at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan that if the sanctions were imposed immediately, they could sustain “tremendous” damage to Japanese banks. The sanctions would bar financial institutions from the American market if they do business with Iran’s central bank.
Now, past the thought balloon of progress below, I invite you to read a reprint of my last diary, which I have deleted and posted again. (If this is a problem, please let me know, and I will restore it)
If the evils of the world were directed by a cabal of super-villains, whose members sat on golden thrones around a blood diamond-encrusted pentagramal table in the apex room of a hidden underground pyramid, kept alive against all laws on nature via advanced intravenous technology pumping their circulatory systems full of fresh plasma harvested from homeless newborns, motionless except for faint reptilian grins flashing whenever the fiber-optic cables connecting their brains to the NYSE big board registered a successful illegal market manipulation or nods of agreement when their chairman, Dick Cheney, proposed another international mass slaughter, we'd be in relatively good shape.
Why? Because, as bad as this compelling and, to me, utterly believable scenario is, it would at least provide us with a degree of stability absent from the current geopolitical landscape.
Now let's dispense with a disclaimer: conspiracies do occur. Criminals who plan and coordinate their activities are tried and convicted for conspiracy all the time. (Though not nearly enough; for some reason, the more powerful the criminals are, the less likely that they will face prison time. Or so it seems to my obviously naive eyes. But I digress.)
Now, I can think of a few different circumstances under which conspiracies occur. Here are two very simplified examples:
1. Two crooks decide to rob a bank together for the same reason: money. 2. Two crooks decide to rob a bank together for different reasons: one wants the money, the other needs to destroy evidence of a crime hidden in a safe deposit box.
So far so good, from the criminals' perspective. They plan together for success, and get their stories straight in case the police start to catch on. Their risk is minimized as much as possible.
But-
What happens if two crooks, for whatever reasons, independently decide on the same target at the same time without letting each other know? Lot of problems can occur; let's run though just one possible set of outcomes.
Crook A ad Crook B enter the bank simultaneously, armed to the teeth and making demands. As they surprise each other, they open fire, and crook A kills crook B plus, naturally, a number of bystanders. Crook A panics, tries to escape, but in haste crashes the getaway car into a police cruiser, whose surprised occupants commence a footchase ending in a shoot-out during which they wound and capture Crook A
Unfortunately, a they also manage to kill two other people running along with Crook A, one a college student who assumed the police were looking for political dissidents (which would have been paranoid before the passing of the latest defense authorization, but we'll assume this chase both occurred after passage and that the student didn't know that only the military could lock folks up without trial) and an undercover FBI agent who had been spying on the student.
This kicks a hell of a hornet's nest on both sides on the law. Crook B's associates, extremely pissed off that crook A killed their colleague and ruined their heist, successfully arrange for a fatal accident to happen to Crook A in prison. However, they don't send Crook A's associates a memo ahead of time, and these associates, already rattled by the situation, mistakenly blame the hit on a rival mob family for whom Crook A used to work and on whom Crook A could have rolled in court. They proceed to assassinate the head of the mob family, actually doing his psychotic heir a favor by beating him to the punch. The heir, however, knowing that an open expression of gratitude would be impolitic, declares open war on Crook A's associates, who, in a reversal necessitated by the survival instinct, join forces with good 'ole Crook B's support group in what becomes a drawn-out underworld war.
In the meantime, the arresting officers really want to explain away the death of the not-so-paranoid college student by blaming the it on the dead FBI agent, who was the cause of said no-so-paranoia. However, the police chief, whose spouse is the offspring of an original co-sponsor of the Patriot Act, isn't about to step into that stinking brown pile and throws the arresting officers under the bus. The police union responds with a work slowdown which enable the aforementioned mob war to escalate until the host city's economy completely collapses as every citizen with either money, a guilty conscience or both gets the hell out of Dodge. A new mayor is elected, who immediately becomes the pawn of the psychotic mob heir, who manages to wipe out all rivals and gain a majority stake in half of the remaining businesses in town.
This brutally sustained shuddering orgasm of mayhem required no master planning by its ultimate beneficiary; all that was needed was a collision of vested interests.
On to US-Israeli-Iranian diplomacy.
Let's first take a look at a few excerpts from Psychology of Intelligence Analysis available for perusal and download at the CIA's website (empahsis by TGW in bold italic :
Bias Favoring Perception of Centralized DirectionVery similar to the bias toward causal explanations is a tendency to see the actions of other governments (or groups of any type) as the intentional result of centralized direction and planning. “. most people are slow to perceive accidents, unintended consequences, coincidences, and small causes leading to large effects. Instead, coordinated actions, plans and conspiracies are seen. Analysts overestimate the extent to which other countries are pursuing coherent, rational, goal-maximizing policies, because this makes for more coherent, logical, rational explanations. This bias also leads analysts and policymakers alike to overestimate the predictability of future events in other countries.
This bias has important consequences. Assuming that a foreign government’s actions result from a logical and centrally directed plan leads an analyst to: • Have expectations regarding that government’s actions that may not be fulfilled if the behavior is actually the product of shifting or inconsistent values, bureaucratic bargaining, or sheer confusion and blunder. • Draw far-reaching but possibly unwarranted inferences from isolated statements or actions by government officials who may be acting on their own rather than on central direction. • Overestimate the United States' ability to influence the other government'sactions. • Perceive inconsistent policies as the result of duplicity and Machiavellian maneuvers, rather than as the product of weak leadership, vacillation, or bargaining among diverse bureaucratic or political interests
The actor has a detailed awareness of the history of his or her own actions under similar circumstances. In assessing the causes of our own behavior, we are likely to consider our previous behavior and focus on how it has been influenced by different situations. Thus situational variables become the basis for explaining our own behavior. This contrasts with the observer, who typically lacks this detailed knowledge of the other person’s past behavior. The observer is inclined to focus on how the other person’s behavior compares with the behavior of others under similar circumstances. This difference in the type and amount of information available to actors and observers applies to governments as well as people.An actor’s personal involvement with the actions being observed enhances the likelihood of bias. “Where the observer is also an actor, he is likely to exaggerate the uniqueness and emphasize the dispositional origins of the responses of others to his own actions.” This is because the observer assumes his or her own actions are unprovocative, clearly understood by other actors, and well designed to elicit a desired response. Indeed, an observer interacting with another actor sees himself as determining the situation to which the other actor responds. When the actor does not respond as expected, the logical inference is that the response was caused by the nature of the actor rather than by the nature of the situation.
Overestimating Our Own ImportanceIndividuals and governments tend to overestimate the extent to which they successfully influence the behavior ofothers. This is an exception to the previously noted generalization that observers attribute the behavior of others to the nature of the actor. It occurs largely because a person is so familiar with his or her own efforts to influence another, but much less well informed about other factors that may have influenced the other’s decision.
In estimating the influence of US policy on the actions of another government, analysts more often than not will be knowledgeable of US actions and what they are intended to achieve, but in many instances they will be less well informed concerning the internal processes, political pressures, policy conflicts, and other influences on the decision of the target government.
You probably see the point here. Experts on the human mind will tell you that humans are very good at recognizing patters; this was a key survival trait for the majority of our species' history, which was spent hunting, gathering, and running like hell from lions in the savanna.
However, as Nicholas Nassim Taleb points out in both Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, we tend to impose patterns on data where there are none, which causes us to mistake random events for the results of predictable forces. A classic example of this occurs when observers see 10 tosses of a perfectly balanced coin come up "heads" and then assume that "heads" is the likely next result; it isn't, the next toss will have an equal chance of coming up "heads" or "tails", but it is very difficult not to assume otherwise. We want patterns so badly that we project them.
This is what makes conspiracy theories so powerful: they explain the results of sheer chaos. We find comfort in the illusion of order they often provide. For good reason: out of control power is often scarier to than corrupt power under control (which may also be a reason authoritarianism is so attractive, but let's save that one for later).
As you can see from the above excerpts, this tendency affects even trained intelligence professionals. Imagine how much more such human cluelessness manifests itself in, say, political opportunists, whose goals are to seize or keep power, and corporate barons, whose want to do the same with money.
Well, there are plenty of both kinds in the US-Israel-Iran mix.
All three nations are experiencing serious unrest on the home front, and political forces in all three have given the classic response: they've raised the specter of a foreign threat. The rulers of both Israel and Iran have a vested interest in using the fear of each other's nations to keep their populations in line while, in the US, the Republicans, with the notable exception of Ron Paul, are beating wardrums as a way to score points against the Obama administration.
And it get worse once economic interests are considered. The warmangers in the US have been pretty clever about pushing for another Middle Eastern invasion based on the hypothetical threat of a weapon of mass destruction. Perhaps sensing that the electorate has a memory longer that Governor Perry's, they are framing the threat in terms of the potential economic damage Iran could cause to the US by closing the Straits of Hormuz. This has been ingeniously tied to an alleged urgency to open the Keystone XL Pipeline and literally tear the country to pieces via fracking, which would supposedly give us some energy security, despite the fact that oil prices respond to global events as much as local supply.
The key take-away from this is that everyone who wants Keystone built, in fact everyone in the whole "drill baby, drill" crowd, has a vested interest, conscious or not, in an Iranian threat to the Straights. This threat is the single best justification they have for their ongoing and proposed projects. Vested interest here affects policy at the highest levels: figures as powerful a Speaker John Boehner have stakes in the pipeline (see Joan McCarter's excellent post John Boehner's Keystone XL conflict of interest).
However, the threat to the Straights is assumed to be part of an Iranian response to any actions taken to prevent them from developing a weapon of mass destruction. So, it is in the best economic interest of the fossil fuel developers for the US pubic to believe and spread the belief that Iran is developing one.
Okay. Perverse, but okay.
But what about the Iranian side of the economic equation? A good friend of mine recently pointed out, and one of the cartoonists of the esteemed Economist seemed to agree, that Iran, as an oil exporter, benefits every time it threatens the Straights as well. Whenever tensions threaten a closing, after all, prices go up, and Iran's profits go up with it. So, in a bizarre way, Iran has a vested economic interest in the US and Israel beleiving it has a weapon of mass destruction, as any hint of possible military actions on their part gives Iran all the excuse it needs to threaten the Straights and rake in the cash.
More, let's remember that every single arms dealer on the planet benefits whenever things get touchy, and that they are very generous with their PAC donations.
Further, the media across the board has a vested interest in an conflict. Peace is not exciting; it's opposite is great copy. No less an authority than William Randolph Hearst realized long ago that war sold papers.. Since our news media, particularly on TV, know that stories must entertain to grab an audience and sell ads, the safe bet is that they will emphasize the excitement of danger more than not. It's not an agenda (except at Fox and similar outlets); it's just good business.
Finally I'll add something personal: I guess I have a vested interest in a conflict, too, because it will make my warnings look prescient. But let me tell you: in this case, I'd rather be wrong.
Now, there are those in the US, Israel and Iran who genuinely believe that they have national security interests on the line here, and are acting with that in mind. There's no denying that. But they are joined by those mentioned above and many others who stand to gain from international gamesmanship for entirely different reasons. As a result, there is a very high-stakes game of chicken being played. Maybe the players think that they have it under control, and that no one will mistake a a rattled saber from a drawn one.
We have survived as a species so far by seeing more threats than their really are: we are geared for paranoia and quick reaction. That was great when dealing with those lions on the savanna long ago. But now if we do not stop, think and act very, very carefully, what helped us to survive in the past may wind up wiping out our future.