Summary of Interview between Einar Tangen and Glenn Diesen on the war in Iran

Einar Tangen, Senior Fellow at Teihie Institute & CIGI, discusses with Professor Glenn Diesen why the U.S. invaded Iran and the geostrategic risks and implications.

https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/einar-tangen-age-of-irrationality

CIGI (Center for International Governance Innovation says of Tangen: Einar Tangen is a CIGI senior fellow and an international commentator on geopolitics and the global economy. Based in Beijing, he specializes in China’s role in global governance and urban development.”)

Below is my summary.

The war in Iran is likely to end up as a major debacle, on par with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. There’s a good chance there will be a bad recession, as oil prices rise. Trump is, of course, totally incompetent and flailing.

Israel is getting pummeled. The big danger is that Israel (or the U.S.) resorts to nuclear weapons.

Partly, the war is to distract from the Epstein files and Trump’s graft.

In 1996 neocon Richard Perle presented to Netanyahu a “Clean Break” plan for Israel to dominate the Middle East, as an alternative to a two-state solution. Ever since then, Israel has needed U.S. aid to achieve that.

Before the recent invasion of Iran, Netanyahu visited the White House several times to convince Trump of the need to invade Iran. Netanyahu told Trump that invading Iran would be as easy as kidnapping Maduro and that Trump would be a hero. The CIA and the Joint Chiefs told Trump that such an invasion carried high risk and that Iran wasn’t on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. The military told Trump that Iran had too many missiles, and the U.S. would run out of defensive interceptors. Also, Iran is mountainous and very hard to invade with ground troops. Iran has been preparing for such a war for a long time.

The U.S. is pulling THAAD Missiles, Patriot Missiles, and other assets from East Asia and Ukraine to defend Israel and U.S. bases in the Middle East.

Tangen predicts that the price of oil may go up to somewhere between $200 or $300 per barrel. During the 1970s OPEC oil crisis caused a four-fold increase in the price of oil. Prices of fertilizer and food will go up. The economies of China, India, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Indonesia will suffer. But China is the low-cost producer of clean energy tech, so it has an advantage.

Russia will benefit from all this. Countries will have to buy their energy.

[It sure does seem plausible that Putin and Netanyahu have kompromat on Trump. Is that why Trump doing this? Or is he just a raving idiot?]

Marco Rubio and even Europe are trying to bring back Western colonization and dominance. Rubio gave a speech to EU leaders calling for the West to reclaim its dominance unapologetically.

Diesen points out that the war is a symptom of desperate attempts by the U.S. to retain unipolar hegemony.

The U.S. can’t send in ground troops without major risk and costs. Unlike the case of Russia, where the U.S. used Ukrainians as cannon fodder to weaken Russia, says Diesen, the U.S. won’t be able to rely on the Kurds to do that against Iran. Tangen calls the Ukraine war a “war by proxy”.

Hopefully the Israelis and Iranians will realize that they need to stop the slaughter. “You be you, I’ll be me.” A Westphalian solution. Otherwise, we are headed for darker times.