Iran and Ukraine: Narrow World |
CounterPunch Exclusives
CounterPunch Exclusives
Iran and Ukraine: Narrow World
The Strait of Hormuz. Photograph Source: Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC – Public Domain
If you think about it, the world’s not that wide. It only feels that way on maps. It gets pretty narrow at key pressure points like the thin ribbon of water called the Strait of Hormuz. The global economy likes to think it “breathes” through this over-tight passage. But listen carefully and you can hear it gasp—tankers inching through with creaking trepidation, markets peering at the horizon, traders watching pulsing radar screens like heart monitors.
As Washington edges closer to confrontation with Iran, “engagement” no longer feels like the right word. Engagement suggests cooperation. Instead, we have the deep inhalation of carrier groups. Fighting may have kicked off by the time you read this. Even the UK now resists enabling escalation from its RAF bases—a refusal that speaks volumes about open-ended wars and contributions later devalued, even mocked, by the present US administration.
Talks continue in Geneva—diplomats sitting by long lines of bottled water, debating enrichment levels and inspection regimes. Beneath the talk lies a simpler truth: neither side trusts the other enough to step back. It won’t just be about centrifuges. It will be about dominating, deterring, and who writes the rules of a region.
In the 1950s, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles famously coined “brinkmanship”—the art of approaching catastrophe without falling in. But nuclear brinkmanship is no art. It’s too close........