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[av_heading heading=’INTERNATIONAL ILONGGO | The Middle East is changing ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY JED JALECO DEL ROSARIO
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Sunday, July 2, 2017
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ONE OF THE BEST ways to understand the Middle East is to look at the major players. Presently, these players include the United States, Russia, the Saudis, Israel, Iran and to some Turkey.
Some analysts may add a one or two other factions, but these are the big boys in that part of the world.
Presently, the conflict in the Middle East is in Syria but it’s important to understand that this is largely a proxy war against Iran and to a certain extent Russia, both of which threaten Israeli, American and Saudi Arabian oil and geopolitical interests.
Should these three factions fail to win their proxy war in Syria (and that seems to be the trend) then Iran and Russia will be one step closer in creating their own bloc in that region, possibly supported by other outside powers like China. This new power bloc will be a military and economic threat against the Saudis, the Israelis and possibly the Turks as well.
The only bulwark against this eventually is the United States, which is eager is to protect its allies in the region as well as the famous petro-collar from all potential threats.
However, with American air cover failing to stop Bashar al-Assad’s forces from eliminating the rebels, it seems that the Americans cannot stop the Iran-Syria-Russia coalition from achieving its objectives, short of declaring a full-scale war (and war is quite unpopular with the American public at the moment).
Thus, we may be seeing the end of an era.
Should the Assad-Russia-Iran coalition succeed, Iran could set up an alliance in the region and use that to create their own version of the petro-dollar. Together with the help of Russia, they could easily dominate the Middle East and destroy the American petro-dollar.
Were this to happen, the United States may potentially pull out of the Middle East, leaving the Israelis and the Saudis to fend for themselves. This seems farfetched at the moment, but it’s important to keep in mind that populist and pro-isolationist forces are growing in the United States, many of whom remember the mess of the Iraq war back in the 2000s, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility for a future US government to pull out of the Middle East.
Should this happen, the American petro-dollar will disappear, and with it, American Internationalism, but that may not actually matter for real Americans, many of whom oppose mass immigration and foreign interventionism, and who want a more “America First” approach from their government.
These are all just projections, of course, but looking at the situation in Syria right now, things are not looking good for either the Saudis, the Americans or the Israelis. The Middle East is changing./PN
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