The war involving Israel, the United States and Iran risks escalating across the Middle East and beyond unless a coordinated diplomatic settlement is pursued.

The Israel-US war on Iran is engulfing the entire Middle East and could escalate to global war. The economic consequences are already severe and could become catastrophic. The Strait of Hormuz carries approximately one-fifth of all oil traded globally, and 30 per cent of the world’s LNG. A sustained closure of the Strait would trigger an energy shock without modern precedent.

The conflict is likely to spiral out of control because the US and Israel are dead set on hegemony in the Arab world and West Asia – one that combines Israeli territorial expansion with American-backed regime control across the region. The ultimate goal is a Greater Israel that absorbs all historic Palestine, combined with compliant Arab and Islamic governments stripped of genuine sovereignty, including on choices as to how and where they export their oil and gas.

This is delusional. No country across the region wants Israel to run wild as it is doing, murdering civilians across the entire region, destroying Gaza and the West Bank, invading Lebanon, striking Iraq and Yemen, and carpet-bombing Tehran. No country wants its hydrocarbon exports under effective US control. The war will end if and only if global revulsion at US and Israeli aggression force these countries to stop. Short of that, we are likely to see the Middle East in flames and the world in an energy and economic crisis unprecedented in modern history.

The war could easily turn into a global conflagration, effectively into World War III.

Yet, there exists an alternative. The war could stop on rational grounds if Israel and the US are decisively called to account by the rest of the world. Ending the war requires a set of interlinked steps to provide basic security for all parties, and indeed for the world. Iran needs a permanent end to the US-Israel aggression. The Gulf countries need an end to Iran’s retaliatory strikes. The Palestinians need an independent state. Israel needs lasting security and the disarmament........

© Pearls and Irritations