Iran War Negotiations
Negotiations between the US and Iran are on again and then off again. I haven’t revisited this issue because every time something seems to have happened (either starting talks or ending them) someone plays the Uno reverse card and the opposite happens.
Even as I was writing this, the President texted a reporter suggesting that the talks may be on again. Who knows? The problem is that, having killed most of the Iranian political leadership, we and probably they have no idea who is actually in charge of the country.
Another update while writing: Trump asked the Iranians to halt the scheduled execution of eight women protestors. It seems they have complied. Four will be released and the other four held in prison for a month. Does this mean the Iranians are responsive? Or is this one part of the remaining pseudo-leadership that will be reversed by the other part? I hope we hear soon that the woman are OK.
Meanwhile, the blockade continues and very little oil and gas is getting out of the region. Europe is reporting that it has only 7 weeks of jet fuel remaining and is already cancelling short flights for commercial airlines. I have a personal interest in flights to and from Austria, as many of you know, so I’m watching this very closely.
At this point the whole thing hangs on who can hold out longest.
The US has a lot of domestic oil, so Trump might be worried about the midterm elections but gas probably won’t go up too much. Oil is currently trading between $90-$96 per barrel. And the stock market is a little up and down, but certainly not in a bad way at the moment. Dow Jones Industrial Average is around 49,000, S&P 500 is around 7,000, and the Nasdaq is about 24,000. Historically, these are huge numbers.
Iran is missing out on something like $500 million a day. That’s got to hurt. But do they care? They would probably be happy to let the entire population starve to death if they could only fulfill their Islamic ideology. But they will run up against the fact that oil wells, once stopped or paused, are very hard to start up again. The inability to export their oil will, very soon, impose a huge cost on their ability to have an oil export industry at all. Unless they really do plan on blowing themselves up, this has to be a constraint on their actions.
The rest of the world is caught in between. China gets a lot of oil from Iran, as does most of Asia. Australia is almost dry. Europe also relies on oil and gas from the Middle East and Russia, which makes things awkward. Pres. Trump and Premier Xi of China are supposed to meet in person sometime soon. (It keeps getting rescheduled.) Will they want this all settled before their meeting?
The Europeans don’t have many cards to play. They need American support for the war in Ukraine and they don’t have the military resources to play any role in the Middle East. They gave up their oil and nuclear (except France) resources within the last few years and can’t turn that around quickly. And yet they are insisting on policies meant to frustrate the American war efforts, such as denying access to their airspace and even American bases in their countries.
DHS Still Unfunded
Remember the whole partial government shutdown thing? It’s still a thing. DHS has been limping along after the President moved money from one budget line to another as an emergency stopgap so employees could get paid. That’s coming to an end, but no one seems to be talking about it. Are both sided bluffing? I don’t know what happens under these circumstances.
Religion and Politics
For years there has been an effort to separate religion and politics, as if they have nothing to do with one another. There were times when this might have worked, but those times were characterized by a broad consensus on both religion and politics. That consensus, if it ever really existed, no longer holds.
We have considered the contretemps between the Pope and the President already. It seems to be receding into the background. There is still a great deal of distance between the two men, but they seem to have each come to the realization that open hostility is in neither one’s interests.
Recently, however, an Israeli soldier was photographed (by another IDF soldier who posted the image in apparent approval) destroying a crucifix in Lebanon. The image received swift condemnation from the American Ambassador to Israel and was condemned by the Israeli president and prime minister. The soldiers involved have been arrested. But it is a stark reminder that hostility across and between religious groups is real and can become very ugly.
Those soldiers were in Lebanon because Israel is currently attacking Hezbollah. Lebanon was a Christian country for the first half of the 20th Century, but Muslim immigration (including Palestinians) led to a civil war from 1975-1990 that saw the emigration of many Christians. Hezbollah formed in 1982 after Israel invaded the country in order to remove the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from its position in Lebanon. The very next year they used suicide bombers to kill 307 American Marines and French soldiers.
After the civil war, Hezbollah increased its political influence, even having a role in parliament and the cabinet. But its purpose was always to use Lebanon as a staging ground for attacks on Israel. Most of its funding and support came from Iran and it was seen as a proxy of the Islamic Republic. Their ties were very close because both are part of the Shia branch of Islam. Until Oct. 7, Hezbollah was considered far more dangerous than Hamas.
Back home, Israel and Islam are the centerpiece of politics in the Democratic party. As primary races continue in advance of the midterm elections this November, the party is making a hard shift. Several nominees for Senate races are embracing hard anti-Israel positions, and one is a Muslim. Polls also show that young Democrats have a worse opinion of Israel than they do of China or Iran. This is a big shift for a party that was supported by the vast majority of Jews in the US.
You can throw nature out with a pitchfork, but it always comes back (Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret - Horace). When religion comes back into politics, it wields the pitchfork.
Christian Persecution in Nigeria
The most tragic and horrifying persecution is continuing in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed in this one country, where the vast majority of all crowns of martyrdom are being won on the earth today. Pray for them.