Two takes on Iran and Ukraine – steel city scribblings

Day after tomorrow I’ll be drawing down the shutters at steel city house, handing Tebay over to a kennel in Sheffield’s beautiful Mayfield Valley, and setting off with Jackie to Bristol. There we’ll overnight with the younger of my two daughters, and in the morning head out to Neston Park, northeast of Bath, for WOMAD 2026.

Meanwhile, with much happening and none of it good, I’m keen to push out as much material as I can. Two things are uppermost in my thoughts. One being the nature of America’s criminal war on Iran – packaged by our corporate media in ways that downplay its February 28 origins in US-Israeli treachery and psychopathy, and/or sell it as the product of an aberrant POTUS led up the garden path by Big Bad Bibi.

I’ve gone into the nature of America’s relationship with Israel many times, most thoroughly in a series of posts on US Neocons & Israel’s far Right. Gone too into the reality that US presidents are frontmen for the oligarchies that truly rule America. But since these things can’t be said too often, and Caitlin Johnstone has with her usual pithiness said them again today, I’ll hand over to her. Here’s how she finishes:

Evil people are the only ones who are ever allowed past the many gatekeeping mechanisms to the presidency. In order to help run a murderous empire that is fueled by human blood, you’ve got to be a psychopath. They don’t let you in unless they’ve been adequately assured that you are sufficiently psychopathic to do the job.

Trump provided them with those assurances. That’s the only reason he sits where he now sits.

The rest you can read, in three usefully spent minutes, on her website under the header Trump is NOT a reluctant war president …

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The second thing on my mind concerns that other sphere of imperial aggression, the proxy war the US is waging on Russia in Ukraine. While many of my compatriots were weighed down five days ago by England’s semi-final defeat at the hands of arch nemesis Argentina – was Diego Maradonna’s “hand of God” goal in ’86 divine retribution after Antonio Rattin’s sending-off in ’66 for “violence of the tongue”? – I was struggling to decipher a different piece of news.

Two days before England crashed out, the Financial Times broke the story that some of the EU’s €6 billion loan to Ukraine – interest free and pay back when it pleases Kiev – will be used to buy Chinese drones. Even with the face-saver that the purchases, via third party Malaysia, will be in kit form to allow Ukraine to claim the drones as home made, this is a slap in the face for Russia. Why would its most important strategic partner help Ukraine to spill Russian blood?

Here to discuss this question – from several angles, with due nuance and in a sprightly twenty-five minutes – are the Duran duo of Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris.

* * *

On a related if tangential note, and despite our shared moans about Naked Capitalism’s leading light, Yves Smith, her daily reports on the Iran war have been indispensable. As a systems man, you’ll appreciate the way she opens today’s report:

Ansar Allah’s closure of the Bab el Mandeb, Trump’s commitment to escalation this week as Iran selectively damages critical petrostate energy and economic infrastructure, reports of fracture in Saudi Arabia and Israel, and slow bleeding out of the global economy all point to growing pressures on connected economic, military, and political fronts … too many are making linear forecasts as if things will continue as they are, like Robert Pape suggesting Trump can continue the war on the current footing for six months. They ignore that pressures in any of these systems, or across them, can and likely will generate sudden, large dislocations …

… when too much energy is pumped into a system, it will undergo a sudden change to a less ordered state. Ice becomes water. Water becomes steam.

After 1929 Crash and Depression, and creation of rules and supports to prevent any repetition, the assumption was that the West would not suffer the near or actual banking collapse that hits developing countries (where IMF’s tender ministrations buffer short-term damage at cost of “reforms” that hurt the working classes). They might have slower moving “crises” like the savings and loan crisis, where institutions are put down and the costs, in terms of recessions and distribution of losses, are distributed broadly if not fairly.

The near-failure of 2008 was due to the authorities engaging in short-term patch ups during three preceding acute phases, with no one in officialdom considering what would happen if Lehman became insolvent. It collapsed in the worst way, with the skimpiest bankruptcy filing allowed. Lehman had hired top bankruptcy Harvey Miller, but did not authorize him to saddle up and prepare. Miller was shocked not just at the fact of sudden implosion but that no one at the Treasury or Fed had contacted him, or any other bankruptcy pro, to ascertain what a Lehman bankruptcy might set off.

In 2008, we merely had one crisis, in derivatives that turbo-charged underlying real economy subprime mortgages. Right now, on the financial front alone, we have multiple potential train wrecks: an AI stock/bond bubble collapse, the overlapping stresses in private debt, and cryptocurrencies. And unlike 2008, when massive Chinese stimulus blunted the meltdown, China’s debt overhang is extreme and its champion EV industry flagging.

What happens to all those financial flash points as the underlying Strait of Hormuz and now (unless Saudi Arabia unexpectedly backs down) Bab el Mandab closures create severe price shocks and shortages in critical supplies like diesel? I do not expect happy outcomes …

Given Caitlin’s point – don’t confuse monkey for organ grinder – and that of Russia Truth as featured in my last post but one – empires in denial of the fact forfeit the capacity for rational strategy – this ride promises to get very bumpy indeed. For all of us.

3 Replies to “Two takes on Iran and Ukraine”

Dave Hansell says:

July 21, 2026 at 10:55 am

That gatekeeping process Caitlin Johnson observes is not limited to the US Presidency. It operates at every level and across every sector of the Collective West – from the candidate selection processes of political parties right down to the local level to the recruitment and promotion choices of institutions and organisations which incorporates the private sector, what’s left of the public sector, and the third/voluntary sector.

If you deviate from The Official Narrative (TON) you don’t even make it to the batting order never mind first base. As Thatcher observed (echoing the U/non-U paradigm of the Mitford sisters), you are either one of us or you aren’t.

- steel city scribe says:
  
  July 21, 2026 at 12:50 pm
  
  Yes
  
- steel city scribe says:
  
  July 21, 2026 at 4:11 pm
  
  On a related if tangential note, and despite our shared moans about Naked Capitalism’s leading light, Yves Smith, her daily reports on the Iran war have been indispensable. As a systems man, you’ll appreciate the way she opens today’s report:
  
  Ansar Allah’s closure of the Bab el Mandeb, Trump’s commitment to escalation this week as Iran selectively damages critical petrostate energy and economic infrastructure, reports of fracture in Saudi Arabia and Israel, and slow bleeding out of the global economy all point to growing pressures on connected economic, military, and political fronts … too many are making linear forecasts as if things will continue as they are, like Robert Pape suggesting Trump can continue the war on the current footing for six months. They ignore that pressures in any of these systems, or across them, can and likely will generate sudden, large dislocations …
  
  … when too much energy is pumped into a system, it will undergo a sudden change to a less ordered state. Ice becomes water. Water becomes steam.
  
  After 1929 Crash and Depression, and creation of rules and supports to prevent any repetition, the assumption was that the West would not suffer the near or actual banking collapse that hits developing countries (where IMF’s tender ministrations buffer short-term damage at cost of “reforms” that hurt the working classes). They might have slower moving “crises” like the savings and loan crisis, where institutions are put down and the costs, in terms of recessions and distribution of losses, are distributed broadly if not fairly.
  
  The near-failure of 2008 was due to the authorities engaging in short-term patch ups during three preceding acute phases, with no one in officialdom considering what would happen if Lehman became insolvent. It collapsed in the worst way, with the skimpiest bankruptcy filing allowed. Lehman had hired top bankruptcy Harvey Miller, but did not authorize him to saddle up and prepare. Miller was shocked not just at the fact of sudden implosion but that no one at the Treasury or Fed had contacted him, or any other bankruptcy pro, to ascertain what a Lehman bankruptcy might set off.
  
  In 2008, we merely had one crisis, in derivatives that turbo-charged underlying real economy subprime mortgages. Right now, on the financial front alone, we have multiple potential train wrecks: an AI stock/bond bubble collapse, the overlapping stresses in private debt, and cryptocurrencies. And unlike 2008, when massive Chinese stimulus blunted the meltdown, China’s debt overhang is extreme and its champion EV industry flagging.
  
  What happens to all those financial flash points as the underlying Strait of Hormuz and now (unless Saudi Arabia unexpectedly backs down) Bab el Mandab closures create severe price shocks and shortages in critical supplies like diesel? I do not expect happy outcomes …
  
  Given Caitlin’s point – don’t confuse monkey for organ grinder – and that of Russia Truth as featured in my last post but one – empires in denial of the fact forfeit the capacity for rational strategy – this ride promises to get very bumpy indeed. For all of us.

Trump provided them with those assurances. That’s the only reason he sits where he now sits.

*

3 Replies to “Two takes on Iran and Ukraine”

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