Thoughts on the Saudi-Iran deal

Okay. I know I'm overdue in, commenting on the Saudi Arabia Iran agreement brokered by China. But as I said on our Telegram channel, there's just so many ramifications to this deal that it's hard to wrap your head around it and know where to begin even talking about it. But let's start with the big obvious things. Now, of course, it's still early days, and we don't know exactly how, sincere or genuine either Iran is or Saudi Arabia is, in this agreement.

But if it is sincere, then here's a few of the sort of big obvious dividends that could come from the agreement. The end of the war in Yemen with the country probably being divided according to, which faction is dominant. It should mean the end of the war in Syria and the rebuilding of that country and a government that has to listen to the grievances of the Muslims. It should also mean the degradation of the political power of Hezbollah in Lebanon. And perhaps most importantly, I think that this agreement and the all of the, context surrounding this agreement will potentially or should potentially cause the realization by Israel that their only viable future is through integrating peacefully with the region.

For them to understand that they are a country in the Arab Muslim world, So they need to start getting along with their neighbors. By conducting this agreement under the official auspices of China, Saudi Arabia was sending a message. There's a new global power in town. There's a new global player in The Middle East, and it is not The USA. It is not the benefactor of Israel.

It is a country that is aligned and deeply intertwined with the Muslim world and the global South. Israel is gonna have to realize that they are not a European country. Now some of the other important potentialities that are perhaps a bit further down the road include what this agreement will mean in terms of global energy and the US dollar. As everyone knows, Saudi Arabia and Iran are two of the largest producers and exporters of oil. And China is the largest trading partner of both Saudi Arabia and Iran and buys the most oil.

So it should be entirely expected that both Saudi Arabia and Iran, would reassess the logic of continuing to trade oil in dollars. Now, I mean, Iran has already been trading oil with China in Yuan for a decade. And Saudi Arabia has already said that they are open to selling oil to China in Yuan. Now having oil sold exclusively in US dollars is the main reason why the US dollar has become the global currency for trade and the global reserve currency. So if two of the largest, oil exporters are conducting their trade in yuan with their largest customer, that could potentially deal a lethal blow to the US dollar as the currency for global trade, meaning even as the world's reserve currency.

And add to this the fact that Saudi Arabia and Iran have both announced that they are considering joining BRICS, and BRICS is contemplating setting up their own currency for trade and reserves. Meaning, all BRICS member countries would trade with each other using this currency. Think about that for a minute. The US has been able to maintain dollar dominance in international trade. In other words, any country that wants to buy oil from Saudi Arabia has to first get dollars from The United States in order to do that.

So what if they don't have to do that anymore? What if they can use their own currency or the Saudi currency or the Chinese yuan or the BRICS currency? How would the US dollar not collapse in value and in demand? Now consider also the fact that a number of Muslim countries are considering joining BRICS, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, and Iraq. Can you imagine?

I mean, BRICS could end up becoming a de facto global Muslim cooperation organization all trading with each other in a non US dollar currency. Now I'm not someone who ever really believed in theories that the US dollar was doomed, theories that the US dollar was, you know, on the verge of falling as the world's global trading currency or as the global reserve currency. Because people have talked about that kind of thing for years, and I never really believed it. I didn't see it. I didn't see that you had the necessary, factors for that to happen.

But now even I have to say, we are seeing the very real potential of this happening. Now I just have to say something else here about the leaders in the GCC, the leaders in the Gulf States, particularly Saudi Arabia and The UAE. Since the Ukraine war, and I talked about this a little bit before, we've seen them making decisions with increasing independence and confidence and defying the West. None of us saw that coming, least of all me. I think we have to acknowledge that most of us saw those countries and those governments alignment with the West as essentially because they were sellouts.

They were hypocrites. But it appears to actually just have been the case that for a certain period of time, the West's interests and their interests happened to converge. And, of course, the fact that undeniably they were under the coercive threat of US power. But the moment they had a chance, after the start of the Ukraine war, the moment they had the chance to operate independently and in pursuit of their own national interests, they took it. And this is after years of building their ability to do that that most of us didn't really pay attention to or didn't understand or interpret properly.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia have spent years and billions of dollars buying leverage in the West through investment, through political lobbying, through campaign donations to politicians, to funding for vital infrastructure projects, and so on. They have built so much leverage that they have more or less neutralized the West's ability to deal with them aggressively. And this has only been exacerbated by the Ukraine war and the sanctions against Russia. And now we can see that these countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar are working according to a very serious long term plan and strategy for securing and expanding their sphere of influence and their ability to pursue policies independently for the good of their nations and for the good of those within their sphere of influence. I have to say, I find it enormously impressive.

This has been a major plot twist in global power dynamics, and I think it's great. Now for anyone who says, oh, The US will never let that happen. Okay. Maybe. I know that's what we've gotten used to.

But again, I think that this assumption that we've all treated as a truism all our lives, this assumption, I think, is no longer reliable. As I've talked about many, many times on this channel, the owners and controllers of global capital are not nationalistic. They are anational. They are a floating borderless class of people who do not necessarily demand that any particular country reign supreme as long as they're profiting. I mean, they've thrown Europe under the bus.

They're sabotaging the real economy of The United States, and they don't feel any loyalty to any particular nation. The global rich are a nation unto themselves. And I mean, look at, for example, BlackRock. They are heavily invested in Aramco. So when Saudi Arabia profits, BlackRock profits.

Doesn't matter to them whether that profit is in US dollars or it's in yuan or if it's in real or if it's in a new BRICS currency as long as it expands their wealth. We also have to understand that one of the major factors behind all of the wars that we've seen in our lifetime was the financial benefit of war for arms producers, for defense contractors, defense companies, for banks, and for reconstruction companies. Okay. Well, that profit motive is currently being served by the Ukraine war and will continue to be served as conflicts spread across Europe. I mean, it is already being served outside of Ukraine in terms of the weapons shopping spree that's underway currently across all of the EU.

So these industries have their market demands already being taken care of and for the foreseeable future. So I don't really see that The US has the motive or really many options for preventing all of this from happening. It's just astonishing how rapidly changes are occurring in the world right now. And I truly believe that the pendulum is swinging in our favor.