Venezuela and Iran have something in common: both are suffering from plunging economies due in large part to harsh economic sanctions imposed on them by the United States.
The two countries are seeking to help each other through a deal to trade gas for gold. Five Iranian tankers are currently heading east over the Atlantic toward Venezuela with what has been estimated by analysts to be some 60 million gallons of Iranian gas purchased with Venezuelan gold.
Despite Venezuela’s huge reserves of oil, it doesn’t have the capacity for refining. Previously, it had counted on an arrangement with Rosneft, the largest petroleum company in Russia, which involved exchanging crude for refined gasoline.
But, last February and March, the Trump administration imposed heavy sanctions against Rosneft leading to the company announcing it would no longer deal with Venezuela.
Thus, with Venezuela in a dire oil emergency and long lines of customers waiting to fill up their gas tanks, the government reached out to Iran to supply them with refined product.
In response to the deal, the U.S. special representative to Venezuela appointed by President Trump, indicted war criminal Elliot Abrams, called it a deal between “two pariah states.”
An unnamed government official quoted in the mainstream media said, “The U.S. has been looking at measures that can be taken.”
Ramping up pressure on the Iran/Venezuela oil deal, on 18 May, Admiral Craig Faller, Head of the U.S. Southern Command in the Caribbean, stated that Iran’s deal with Venezuela was meant to “gain a positional advantage in our neighborhood as a way to counter U.S. interests.”
The Admiral did not say U.S. Caribbean naval forces would physically block the Iranian tankers from the Venezuelan coast, adding, “With respect to Venezuela, our focus has been to share intelligence, trying to figure out what Maduro and his cronies are up to.”
In response to Faller’s statement, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Abbas Mousavi, said any attempt by the U.S. to stop its ships would be an act of “piracy” and promised a “decisive response” if its tankers are confronted.
Last Wednesday, Vladimir Padrino, Venezuela’s Defense Minister, said his country’s military would escort the Iranian tankers, raising concerns for a potential military confrontation with the U.S. naval presence.
As stated on Friday in an editorial on oilprice.com:
“Millions of dollars of fuel are at stake and a geopolitical crisis for which a response against Iran is likely to be real this time around because it comes against the backdrop of global chaos, a US president in trouble ahead of November elections, and a renewed attempt to bring Maduro down.”
“Fortune” Arrives
On Sunday, after a week of threats and counter threats, the first of five Iranian tankers entered the territorial water of Venezuela transporting over a million gallons of fuel. The tanker, named “Fortune,” was escorted by Venezuelan naval and air force support. Venezuela’s oil minister, Tareck El Aissami, officially confirmed the arrival: “The ships of the sister Islamic Republic of Iran are in our exclusive economic zone.”
In response to the arrival of the first tanker, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro addressed the nation stating, “Venezuela and Iran both want peace… We have the right to trade freely.”
The official response from the U.S. came from State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus: “Venezuelans need free and fair presidential elections leading to democracy and economic recovery, not Maduro’s expensive deals with another pariah state.”
TRENDPOST: With America and much of the world bombarded with COVID Hysteria, the rising tensions between President Trump and his two international arch enemies, Iran and Venezuela, is out of the news and out of the minds of the general public.
Although oil prices are down some 40 percent this year, a military conflict between the U.S. and Iran may well spike Brent Crude prices well above their current mid-$30 per barrel range.
Should oil shoot above $80 a barrel, it will dramatically worsen the already diving global economy, its cash-strapped consumers… and crash the overvalued equity markets.
TRENDPOST: Preparing for “measures that can be taken,” on 1 April, President Trump ordered a fleet of destroyers and military planes to patrol near the Venezuelan coast under the guise of monitoring drug trafficking from Venezuela.
And, as reported in the Trends Journal, on 26 March, the U.S. officially offered a $15 million bounty for evidence leading to the arrest of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. who it charged with narco-terrorism.
Long forgotten, just a few weeks ago, as reported in the Trends Journal, two former U.S. Green Berets and some 60 Venezuelans attempted to kidnap President Maduro and commandeer him to the U.S., so they could collect the bounty.
The plot failed. Maduro’s forces killed eight Venezuelans and arrested the rest of the team. Blaming Washington for the coup attempt, Maduro said, “We knew everything. What they talked about. What they ate and drank. Who financed them.”
President Trump denied there was any official U.S. government involvement. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated, “[If] we’d have been involved, it would have gone differently.”
TRENDPOST: Unquestioned and readily accepted by Presstitutes, who get paid to put out by their corporate pimps and Washington whoremasters, is Admiral Faller’s contention that Iran is doing the deal to “gain a positional advantage in our neighborhood as a way to counter U.S. interests.”
“Our neighborhood?
Venezuela is some 2,800 miles from the United States!
It is no more “our neighborhood” than the Iranian neighborhood 7,240 miles from the U.S. shores, which the American military threatens, surrounds, and patrols.
Washington’s decades of never-ending murderous, criminal policies of foreign entanglements and regime change is supported by the mainstream media and easily sold to the general public, who pay for the wars with their money and their lives.
Indeed, as the cover of our 28 April Trends Journal clearly reads, “DUMB ENOUGH TO BELIEVE BUSH’S WAR – DUMB ENOUGH TO BELIEVE THE COVID WAR.
It is not only Americans! Name the wars, name the times, name the place; the masses march to Mussolini, salute Stalin, Heil Hitler… and hailed Caesar.
TRENDPOST: Ramping up tensions against Iran, the U.S. is now holding live-fire training operations in the Persian Gulf near Iran. As reported in the website Anti-War.com:
“Officials touted it as a chance to demonstrate the ‘awesome firepower’ of US weapons… This comes following President Trump’s talk of shooting down Iranian ships that get too close, and a more recent Navy admonishment that they’d consider any boat that gets close an act of aggression.”
