(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . But really, this war between Israel and Hamas is all about money, power and oil [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-11-03 This is an opinion piece, and one that I copied (and modified) over from one of my Israeli friends (credit: Shai Eden, though he isn’t on here). The idea behind it, while speculation, could shed light onto the origin of this specific war. And while we can still argue, still disagree, and still decry the killing of people on both sides of the Israel-Gaza border — this piece does not dwell on the current “micro” situation, preferring to look at the “macro”, bringing up points and thoughts, some of which have been discussed in comments in the various I/P diaries. So… why did October 7th happen? Despite the hatred and fanaticism of Hamas, the reason for the timing and size of the event that took place on October 7th can be explained by a geopolitical landscape we thought forgotten — the Cold War, which has been not-so-cold for the last decade or so; and the two things that have plagued humanity for as long as we remember: money and power. According to Those who think that the reason for the Hamas terrorist attack was only their tremendous hatred of the "Zionist oppressors", might be missing the big picture. Not the “Free Palestine” picture, i.e. Gaza and the West Bank. The bigger picture.According to several reports , militants from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad participated in exercises in September, led by officers of the Quds Force , the foreign operations arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. We have heard from Intelligence agencies and newspapers that Iran helped plan the attack. The Wall Street Journal reports (sorry, paywall) that the decision to attack Israel was made at a meeting in Beirut on October 2nd, by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran leadership. An adviser to the Syrian government and a European official gave the same account of Iran's involvement. The picture now extends further out, from just the two actors, into the broader Middle East. Why would Iran order this attack, though? Usually, despite their monstrous hatred towards Israel and their desire to wipe them off the map, Iranian leadership is considered, at least in Israel, as very careful. Undoubtedly, they knew that after such an extremely barbaric attack, Israel would react much more severely than any previous war or operation. So what went through the minds of the Iranian leaders? Why pull Gaza into a disaster? The answer, though we know it already: Because that's exactly what they wanted. Disaster in Gaza. And what’s behind that want? Money. But its not just “small change”. It’s not the millions that Qatar transfers to Hamas. It’s not the hundreds of millions (even a few billions) that America provides to the countries of the region. That’s chump change. It’s much more than that. This is the biggest money war we've ever known. Welcome to the latest chapter of the Cold War. The biggest moneymaker was and remains… oil and gas. The energy war. Just last week, Russia announced that Hamas is not a terrorist organization. Yesterday, Russia declared that Israel has no right to defend itself. Isn't that weird? Why would Russia say such a thing? What does Russia have to do with the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians anyway? Now, I'm not saying that Russia did this. Not directly, anyway. At the end of the day, it was Hamas who decided to (no pun intended) pull the trigger on October 7th. But one thing seems clear, and we here on DKos have discussed it in some comments before: the biggest beneficiary of this war could be Russia, and with it China and Iran. The largest energy transportation projects in the world are owned by the Russia and China. These are the most sophisticated, expensive energy projects ever. They are Putin's baby, built over the past two decades, quietly, quietly, in partnership with China. This all happened while the US was busy with its Gulf wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, in the post-9/11 period. You can say that the US fell asleep at the wheel, and Putin “took” Europe, and together with China they are taking the East and the Gulf. It is a system of pipes that appears imaginary: In just a few years, Russia has achieved a tremendous level of control over Europe's energy. Before the Ukraine war, Russia was the source of about 50% of all gas in Europe, and was its main supplier. In Europe, gas is not just electricity and stoves, gas is life . It is used to heat homes during winter, and keep the tap water hot. But the war in Ukraine disrupted this plan, and the West began to wake up to the realization that dependence on Russia could hurt it. So the US and Europe, late to the game, looked for a way to regain their lost control. The US’s fear was that Russia and China would use this power against the West — that Russia basically “controlled” Europe by controlling their gas and oil tap. And this fear was confirmed in the war in Ukraine when Russia threatened to shut off its supply to Europe as an ultimatum against the West's support in Ukraine. Gas prices soared worldwide, to the point that many families in Europe lived in the cold, because they preferred not to buy expensive gas. Europe entered existential anxiety and countries like India found themselves on the brink of crisis. The US realized that it had to respond to this situation. It is not possible that in every conflict between the West and the East - Putin will close the gas. Initially, Europe lowered the amount of gas purchased from Russia from 50% of its yearly need to 20%. Sanctions on Russia were only partially successful, though: last year, Russia earned an astronomical 138 billion dollars just from gas exports and another 218 billion dollars from oil exports, despite the sanctions. The country who greatly benefits from this cooperation between Russia and China is Iran. Only last July, Iran signed a gas agreement with Russia in the amount of 40 billion dollars, which joins a lot of other business that exists between the two and between them and China. Iran sits on the second largest gas reserves in the world, after Russia, and it needs to sell it to someone. So, with the help of Putin's pipeline, Iran was circumventing its own sanctions by selling gas to... the West. Weird, right? Sanctions on Iran? Not when you have Russia on your side. And so, the US and its European allies started to look for more alternatives. And today, the West has nearly taken Russia out of the game. The West, led by the US, found another creative solution to bypass this Russian-China energy front, thinking that if Putin “controls” Europe through his northern gas and oil pipelines – they will outsmart him and bypass him... from the south. America's super-ambitious economic project has been given a very friendly name. They called it: "The Abraham Accords". It is a huge peace plan in the gulf, but it's also a huge economic corridor, and it's also a lot of gas. The vision is to produce a territorial sequence of normalized relations that begins in India, through the Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and from there to Greece, Cyprus and Europe. By having a way to supply gas and oil to Europe from the South, the Russian pipelines in the North become unnecessary. If you will, this is the Russian-Iranian-Chinese front against the Western-Sunni-Israeli front.Truly some Game of Thrones shit. Pay attention to these drawings: The above one (displayed further up) is Russia's pipeline system; and the one below is the “corridor of peace”, as presented by Netanyahu himself in his celebratory speech on September 9th of this year, a month before the horrific October 7th attack on the Israel. There is one piece left in the puzzle — Saudi Arabia and Israel do not have official relations. Saudi Arabia itself is looking for a solution for exporting oil and gas from the region. It is also threatened by the Iranian nuclear program and the rapprochement of its Shiite enemy (Iran, to be clear) with China. So Israel and Saudi Arabia will make "peace". Easy. Everyone will benefit – Sunni Saudi Arabia will sell oil and gas to the West, goods will come from India and bypass China, Saudi Arabia will also compete with Shiite Iran, which it hates, and it will be part of a potential military alliance with the US and Israel. Saudi Arabia is also possibly hoping that it will get approval for atomic energy from the US. Israel would gain further recognition from the Arab world, and become a central economic player. Indeed, during the summer of this year, everything gained momentum when Biden and Bibi started talking about an historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Then on September 9th, during the G20 conference, Biden himself announced his "super plan": a rail line linking India to Europe, through the Middle East Not just a train, not just peace — "a real big deal, changing the regional rules of the game", Biden and Bibi’s words. During the September 9th G20 summit, Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, specifically says the words: "a pipeline of clean gas" and “a hydrogen pipeline”. It is about a fast and advanced train that will transport goods from India to Europe, through the territories of the participating countries of the Abraham Accords. A wonderful vision in itself. But this train, with all its pomp, hides one more important goal under the tracks.... a gas pipeline. Crude oil and gas will be transported by train; advanced, clean gas by a pipeline underneath.During the September 9th G20 summit, Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, specifically says the words: "a pipeline of clean gas" and “a hydrogen pipeline”. Russia’s pipelines do not currently transfer hydrogen . Which, simply put, means an upgraded gas pipeline that will make Putin's pipeline obsolete. The West will have a bigger, and better, pipeline. (And this pipeline from India also connects to the pipeline that Bibi agreed on with the leaders of Greece and Cyprus in January 2020. The "Eastmed" pipeline that will be the longest in the world between Israel and Greece, and from there to Italy.) And Saudi Arabia? They need this new alliance, in order to deter Iran, which hates the Saudis. It also desperately wants to bypass the Russian-Chinese pipeline corridor towards Europe so they can sell their own gas and oil. They need it so much that at the G20 conference the Saudi crown prince announced that his country would invest about 20 billion dollars in the project — even before the peace agreement with Israel was signed. According to them, peace was a done deal. What else can interfere? It is clear to everyone that such a front, with this train and pipeline, is a disaster for Russia and China. And if it is a disaster for them, it is also a disaster for Iran, because it strengthens its hated Sunni neighbors in the south, and connects them to the hated Zionists from the west. For Iran, an alliance between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Israel is an indescribable disaster. This connects Saudi Arabia to the military power of Israel, and Israel to the economic power of Saudi Arabia. And that puts Saudi Arabia and Israel as major players in the global energy market. So how do you sabotage the new front? Easy: killing the peace. Where? How? in Gaza. A few days after the G20 summit, Hamas were already training in Iran, and three weeks after the announcement in September, the meeting with Hezbollah and Hamas took place and the operation to thwart peace was launched. On October 3rd, four days before the attack, Khamenei was quoted criticizing Saudi Arabia for the peace plan, and he concluded his words with a firm sentence: it will not happen. Iran chose Hamas, and not for nothing. Hamas is Sunni, like Saudi Arabia, and they are loved by the public in Saudi Arabia. We think it's all a war to release some Palestinian prisoners or a deep religious agenda, but in the end, while it kinda is, it's actually all about power and money. Money and power. For Hamas, striking Israel is a glory, to release prisoners, to give themselves a sense of victory. But as far as Iran is concerned? They don't really care about the small Sunni organization that took over Gaza. Rather, Shiites hate Sunnis so much that some say that they hate Jews even less. It’s a fierce, historical hatred Iran could have chosen Hezbollah to start the war and it might have been an even greater success. But Hezbollah is the real child of Iran, a Shiite religious organization, which it is obliged to protect. But Hamas, the Sunni organization, can be sacrificed on the altar of the pipeline. Hamas's hatred of Jews is so great that they will agree to any attack that involves blood and humiliation to Israel. But in order for Iran to torpedo such a significant peace agreement, it is not enough for some small attack in Tel Aviv, leading to yet another short lived Israeli military response from which peace and Biden's pipeline can be restored. Iran needs something substantial, big, that will resonate throughout the Arab world, until Saudi Arabia can no longer even think about such a peace with Israel. You need something that will last for years. Israel needs to go crazy, for Israel to be so angry that even Biden will not be able to stop it. We need an unforgettable mega-attack, we need a new 9/11. We need a true war. And that's how this disgusting terrorist attack of October 7th started. Not in the name of the Shiite religious war against the "Zionist occupation", but in the name of money. Not a religious war - a gas war. But surprise! Saudi Arabia is in no hurry to call off the peace. Because until Saudi Arabia declares that the peace is cancelled, Iran's great goal has not been achieved. Note that the Saudis are quite silent. Israel is crushing Hamas, their Sunni brothers, in Gaza, and they are still trying to keep some opening for peace with Israel and the huge project that is so important to them. It is likely that we will see attempts by Russia, China and Iran to increase the war, to prolong it, until it touches Saudi Arabia. And while I do believe that Israel has no choice to respond as it did (let’s for once not argue about proportionality, or how much is too much, etc.), I do think that the eventual solution in Gaza will resolve around a buffer zone with a peacekeeping force of some kind, and some other entity (the Palestinian Authority, perhaps) taking governing control of the Gaza Strip. I just hope that solution will come in time, and I’m sure that is part of the reason we are seeing heavy US involvement — both it terms of military movements, diplomatic movements, and more. A few anecdotes: [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/3/2203320/-But-really-this-war-between-Israel-and-Hamas-is-all-about-money-power-and-oil?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/