"The launch of INSTEX — or the "Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges” — by
France, Germany and the UK to facilitate non-dollar trade with Iran, is
seemingly a European circumvention of unilateral US sanctions on Iran, yet I
believe it is merely another Trojan Horse tool in a wider transatlantic ‘good
cop / bad cop’ production meant to inevitably infiltrate Iran’s banking, energy,
industrial, defense, security and technological firewall capabilities across
various industries,” Pye Ian told Tasnim.
Pye Ian is an independent economic and geopolitical researcher as well as a
strategic planning and business development advisor. His articles and analyses
on international affairs, economic trends and cultural topics have been
published in various mainstream and alternative press sources. Ian’s wider
intellectual interests are reflected in his writings on the convergence of
foreign affairs, political philosophy, history, global finance and energy
policy. He has undergraduate degrees in economics and political science from the
University of California and a Master’s degree in finance from Cambridge
University.
Following is the full text of the interview.
Q: After months of foot-dragging, Britain, France and Germany in early
Feb. issued a joint statement on the creation of a new trading system called the
Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) that will allow trade between
the EU and Iran without relying on direct financial transactions. What do you
think about this mechanism?
Ian: The launch of INSTEX — or the "Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges” —
by France, Germany and the UK to facilitate non-dollar trade with Iran, is
seemingly a European circumvention of unilateral US sanctions on Iran, yet I
believe it is merely another Trojan Horse tool in a wider transatlantic ‘good
cop / bad cop’ production meant to inevitably infiltrate Iran’s banking, energy,
industrial, defense, security and technological firewall capabilities across
various industries. The US obviously serving as bad cop here, with its EU
partners serving as good cops, all meant ultimately to penetrate Iranian
financial and production capacities as much as possible under the auspices of
facilitating humanitarian goods-related transactions only, including food,
medicine, and medical equipment.
Let’s not forget that the damaging Stuxnet virus of a decade ago, which was
launched by US and Israeli cyber-terrorism efforts, reached its target via the
networks of trusted business partners. Early versions of the malware seemed
dedicated to intelligence gathering, but then later versions started attacking
internal infrastructure.
That mal-intentioned history is fairly recent, as is the more tellingly united
transatlantic approach to Iranian ally and fellow heavy oil-rich independent
nation, Venezuela, where you have the UK, France, Spain, Belgium and the wider
EU all on the same page as Washington with regard to demanding that President
Maduro step down in favor of a more western-compliant leadership. A return to
puppet-state status, basically. Ask why the US & EU would necessarily differ in
their collective approaches toward Iran & Venezuela, when both nations are
deemed as needing "regime change” ASAP by said Atlanticists? It’s simply because
of assigned tactical differences, yet the same underlying strategy toward both
persists.
Also, Iran is launching its 'crypto-Rial' cryptocurrency, reportedly meant for
facilitating future banking and institutional transactions, and will be followed
by a cryptocurrency that will be for more mainstream use. Related, Venezuela’s
already launched its Petro cryptocurrency, which is meant ultimately for pricing
& trading oil and other resources globally as well. The Petro in Caracas is seen
as a deep systemic fiscal threat by Washington, especially because the
Russian/Chinese allied approach toward Venezuela is helping with it. The clearly
unified transatlantic, Atlanticist west, which invented the internet &
blockchain technologies, will thus certainly not allow Russian & Chinese-allied
Iran nor Venezuela to simply circumvent its economic, fiscal & thus political
mandates – especially in oil pricing & trading - yet ostensibly needs different
tools for addressing each country, seeing that, despite heavy sanctions, trade &
currency wars against each nation, Iran’s internal situation is today more
sophisticated than Venezuela’s. Hence the deployment of seemingly friendly
European states in supposedly "going around” US sanctions.
Q: In one of your recent interviews, you equated the generally
"belligerent western approaches toward both Venezuela and Iran, essentially due
to the same reasons i.e. oil, gold, independence, leaning East and South
globally and de-dollarization”. Please explain more.
Ian: It’s no secret that, as mentioned, Iran & Venezuela both retain vast
amounts of untapped oil and other valuable natural resources. Yet both are also
working independently to circumvent dollar reliance for their energy resource
pricing, trading and receipt recycling. This significant political step is due
in part to punishing dollar-based economic sanctions, currency attacks,
embargoes and trade wars imposed against both Tehran and Caracas by the west,
and partly because their global eastern and southern hemispheric allies –
foremost Russia and China – are seeking to hoist and sustain a multipolar
international economic and geopolitical order free of imperial, "Full Spectrum
Dominance” mandates from the increasingly belligerent actors pushing "The
Washington Consensus”.
The US dollar has served as global reserve currency since the end of World War
II. It has also been a fiat currency – meaning a currency that a government has
declared to be legal tender, but which is not backed by a physical commodity –
since August 15th, 1971, when the Nixon Administration in the US ended the
convertibility of dollars into physical gold, which was a key economic
stipulation resulting from the Bretton Woods Conference held just before the end
of World War II.
Two years after "the gold window” ended, Washington struck a key deal with Saudi
Arabia to have oil exclusively priced in US dollars, with the rest of OPEC
following suit with said plan in 1975. "Petrodollar Recycling” resulted, where
dollar earnings for oil production & commerce would be ‘recycled’ into US
Treasury Bonds. The total deal ended up replacing direct gold tethering with
indirect oil reliance, essentially, with regard to the means for continuing to
prop the US dollar up as reserve currency. "Confidence” in the dollar continues
unabated because oil bought anywhere must be priced, traded & reinvested using
dollars. It also allowed Washington to, in essence, print dollars infinitely for
any purpose without endangering its deficits like any other nation would.
Said deal also enabled the dollar to eventually be used as a weapon against any
other currency on earth, considering that the rest of the world’s currencies
are, by default, fiat as well, following the dollar’s imposed lead. That ‘dollar
weaponization’ thus results in the rather easy ability of Washington to
negatively target dollar exchange rates. We’ve seen the purposefully deleterious
results of such a tool fall upon the Iranian rial, the Venezuelan bolívar, the
Russian ruble, the Zimbabwean dollar, and certainly even the Turkish lira, all
as political acts from Washington and London. As the national currency weakens,
the intention goes, so would eventually the targeted government’s hold on power,
thereby resulting in – at the least – mass, continuing, destabilizing riots in
the streets. If the targeted government doesn’t ‘change its ways’, then the
pressure is ratcheted up via sustaining those mass riots while a military coup
or its ilk would be planned within said nation.
The responses from nations such as Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China and even
NATO-membered Turkey (which defeated its Washington-backed coup attempt in 2016,
with tacit Russian assistance) have been to individually and more importantly,
collectively, seek "de-dollarization”, which includes generally seeking to
reduce dollar-based transactions, dumping US Treasury Bonds out of their
national reserves, relying upon bilateral currency usages with other nations
(I.E. ruble/yuan, lira/ruble, rial/yuan, etc.), and most critically, aiming at
reimplementing key commodity backing for their currencies. In the cases of both
the Iranian and Venezuelan national currencies, the reintroduction of the use of
physical gold for affording solvency & credibility to their currencies has been
carried out over the past few years.
In turn, tying such rejuvenated currencies to how they wish to price, trade and
recycle the earnings for oil, natural gas and minerals trades out of their
respective territories has also been spearheaded as a geostrategic response to
years of economic harassment & outright acts of war from the west.
Lastly, innovation research into exploring how safe, protected and deployable
(scalability-wise) the use of cryptocurrencies would be vis-à-vis both the gold
and oil tie-ins for national currencies has been proceeding in said independent
nations as well.
Importantly, the assistance of Russia and China for conceptualizing,
implementing and inevitably scaling such de-dollarization has been vital because
Moscow & Beijing are more tightly allied now than ever before. Through the
combination of their natural resources (oil, natural gas, gold, steel, coal,
copper, etc.), economic prowess (China’s is the strongest human resource
production engine in world history), political visions and international
institutional mobilizations (the Eurasian Economic Union, New Silk Road,
Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Asian Infrastructure Bank & New Development
Bank, BRICS, etc.), and last but not least, combined military capabilities
(millions of combined personnel, both nuclear-armed, and having conducted
countless joint military drills for many years now), Russia and China lend
continual guidance, reassurance & protection to their Eurasian, West Asian, East
Asian, African, Latin American and, yes, even European allies & trading
partners.
The Atlanticist west, led by the US but including the UK, UK Commonwealth, EU,
Israel, Saudi Arabia & other Persian Gulf states, is collectively determined to
prevent such independent Eurasian movement away from dollar hegemony, foremost
because such a move – successfully actualized and expanded – would devastate the
already over-leveraged state of transatlantic banking and finance, which sits on
combined amounts of debt numbering in the tens of trillions of dollars. Once
synthetic derivatives contracts and other ‘dark finance pool’ instruments are
included, then the risk profile issued from western financial institutions
measures a cascading fiscal cataclysm as involving hundreds of trillions of
dollars.
Why are said massive debt figures significant? Because the sanctity of a)
continuing to issue debts endlessly, and b) preventing said debt bubbles from
unraveling violently, unpredictably and in politically threatening ways, all
rely upon maintaining the US dollar as both the perennial reserve currency and
petro-currency standard until the ruling transatlantic Establishment decides to
replace said protocols themselves (be it with Special Drawing Rights issued by
the IMF as dollar-replacements, or with state-approved cryptocurrencies, or the
like). Torpedoing dollar and petrodollar hegemony are what the global East and
South seek, and hence the world economy right now resembles a ‘Tug of War’, with
currency credibility serving as the ‘rope’ in said battle.
Q: As you know, EU officials have repeatedly expressed the bloc’s
determination to preserve the JCPOA. Recently, US Vice President Mike Pence
said, "(This is) an ill-advised step that will only strengthen Iran, weaken the
EU and create still more distance between Europe and the US”. Do you believe
that the EU will finally stand up to the US or it is just a bluff game?
Ian: As I’ve stated, and based upon a sober reading of both history, viable
economics and even of esoteric philosophy (as read by the ruling Establishment),
it is a bluff game, foremost because the governments, banks & general economic
systems of the US, UK, EU and their subject nations are run by the same ultimate
Syndicate of power, which is very old, very occult in its epistemological
provenance, make-up and aims, and very coordinated in meeting its universal
challenges, despite seemingly contradictory stances taken by, say, the US and EU
with regard to Iran.
So, EU nations seemingly differ with Washington on Iran, yet I’d be very
cautious if I were in Tehran. Where we’ve ended up here on the JCPOA clearly is
NOT about preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but about – as
mentioned above - sovereign independent national economic imperatives vs. those
of an Atlanticist empire which won’t tolerate disobedience.
You’ll notice how the EU is on the same page as Washington & London regarding
wanting Maduro out of power in Venezuela in favor of their corporate compliant
puppet, Juan Guaidó. And yet we’re led to believe that the US & EU, by contrast,
genuinely differ regarding medium to long term preferences on Iran? When, as
mentioned, both Iran & Venezuela are oil & resource-rich independent nations
working with the global East in divorcing from dollar hegemony?
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas over-spoke in his recent speech by admitting
that "our goal remains an Iran without nuclear weapons, precisely because we see
clearly how Iran is destabilizing the region".
Wow. Really, Europe? If that is how you truly feel, then Maas just revealed some
of the transatlantic community’s playing cards, as this is clearly a ‘good
cop/bad cop’ theatrical routine, with the EU playing good cop & the US & its
tightest allies playing bad cops.
Iran does NOT intend upon pursuing nuclear weapons & Tehran has made that
abundantly clear for years now by holding steadfastly to the JCPOA nuclear
agreement. Instead, this is really about preventing Iran from pursuing an
independent economic & global energy policy, just as it is against Venezuela
doing the same. Sustained global non-dollar oil trading by Iran, Venezuela,
Russia, China & Turkey would trigger incalculable instability across global bond
and equity markets, causing immediate failure for already endangered banks which
carry trillions in debts on (and purposefully off of) their official balance
sheets. Hence the ramped up belligerent talk by Washington against both Iran &
Venezuela.
US Vice President Pence also criticized the initiative of France, Germany and
Britain to allow European companies to continue operating in Iran despite US
sanctions. That is also a tool of deception, via a smokescreen criticism, as the
US, UK & EU want corporate, technological & intelligence transparency across the
totality of Iranian banks, companies, and everything else, one way or another.
Q: Will the JCPOA stand?
Ian: It is hard to tell, yet the proverbial ball is in the court of the US and
its faithfully compliant allies. This is because – again – Iran has been both
adherent to the JCPOA’s mandates and stipulations, and forthright in goodwill
fashion about its wish to continue to abide by the JCPOA.
Yet the JCPOA obviously did not achieve what it partly set out to do – namely,
either force a presumably frustrated Iran to pull out of the agreement – thereby
giving a casus belli for the west to take harsher measures against Tehran – or
yield other desired political capital, such as blowback at home, where Iranians
revolt against a seemingly weak government. Hence why the Trump Administration –
run ultimately by behind-the-scenes neoconservative and neoliberal planners
beholden conclusively to the sweeping, coordinated Syndicate or Establishment I
referenced above, rather than by either Trump, his Cabinet or even his
‘advisors’ – voiced irrational frustration over the JCPOA from even before
Trump’s admission into the White House. They’ve been out-witted and outclassed
by Tehran, and so now need to mix strategies up a bit via their appointed
"Madman Theory”-laden disruptive politician in chief.
Source:Tasnim