Kumar Bahukhandi
Rising tensions in West Asia push oil prices higher, raising fears of global stagflation. (AFP)
Conflict involving Iran and Israel fuels oil volatility and economic fears
Global crude prices are yo-yoing as the US President waxes and wanes on the war that he, along with Israel, initiated against Iran. Donald Trump’s vague and contradictory responses to media queries on the war have been varying with the time of the day, subject to his erratic mood swings. Crude prices that threatened to top $120 a barrel declined to $90 momentarily when Trump said the end of the war could be near.
Whose war is it anyway and who is to stop it — Messrs Trump and Netanyahu or the new “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, said to be in the line of fire and who may have been injured already, or the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps, considered to be the real regime in Iran and which controls the deployment of ballistic missiles and drones and where they are aimed at when fired?
Even as Trump says “the war is won” but “not won enough” the world pays the price, including India which is now scrambling to keep the supply lines of LPG going for the food industry, hospitals, schools and community kitchens. Amid the madness, the cause of the war, not dissimilar to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is all but forgotten as missiles and drones fly around the whole region.
This war, declared without a thought as to what happens the day after it ends, rages on and there is no clear off-ramp for the combatants. The Arab nations, being sucked into the conflict by Iran’s retaliatory actions that have not stopped with just aiming at US military bases but also peppers civilian landmarks, are wondering whether to strike back. As fires rage around oil refineries and even desalination plants, the images aired on the visual media are getting apocalyptic.
The solace is negligible as Trump declares that he is waiving sanctions on oil so that the world can buy crude, some of which is available readily as it is at sea now after being pumped out of fields in Russia. But India seemed to demur when the US President magnanimously declared a 30-day window to buy Russian oil that had been the stumbling block to the dormant trade deal talks with the US.
Negligible issues and pittances are being spoken about just as the war is threatening the global economy with stagflation, perhaps not seen even post the Covid pandemic. The American public knows it too as they have seen gasoline prices rise at the pump just as the Pentagon worries about the stockpile of arms, ammunition, missiles and drones. Iran has set the cat among the pigeons by transforming global energy into a victim of the war.
History has been inordinately serving the lesson which teaches that wars triggered by US or Russian interventions in the West Asian – North African region have changed nothing except a few leaders of regimes the US or the West did not like. Be it Libya, Syria, Somalia, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan or Afghanistan, the only constant has been post-conflict chaos in an eternal cauldron of tension, conflicts and terror-related events with the people condemned to endure what they must.
As the US moves its heaviest bombers to UK bases, obviously to deploy them over Iran as Trump promises “death, fire and fury” if the Strait of Hormuz is blocked, will someone tell him that the basic issue of nuclear bombs for Iran will not be solved even if he and his Israeli ally reduces Tehran to rubble like the Gaza Strip. When he says the war is “very complete, pretty much”, we hope he will walk the talk and call off the dogs of war.
