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It is worth paying attention to several things that have happened over the past few days. The US granted India permission to import russian oil for one month. And soon after, US Treasury Secretary S. Bessent announced that the US is considering easing oil sanctions against russia. putin’s representative, Dmitriev, confirmed that the parties are holding negotiations, as “WESTERN sanctions are harming the GLOBAL economy,” writes President of Centre for Global Studies “Strategy XXI” Michael Gonchar.
Back on March 3th, Donald Trump wrote: “No matter what, the United States will ensure the FREE FLOW of ENERGY to the WORLD.” He stated that the US would provide insurance guarantees and naval escort to ensure the passage of oil tankers and other vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. However, the US is in no hurry to do this. The consequence is a price escalation in the oil market – at the close of trading on Friday, $92 per barrel for Brent, as well as in the gas market.
If Hormuz continues to remain blocked for a long time, or has limited freedom of passage for tankers with a high risk of being hit, then this is a serious problem for China. The Celestial Empire receives between 45% and 50% of all its imported oil from the Gulf zone. Yes, China has a 200-day strategic oil reserve, and they could take more russian oil, but who knows how long the war in the Gulf will last. In this way, Trump wants to achieve several things:
- He is showing Xi before his visit who holds their hand “on the taps” of the world’s largest oil hub and LNG hub (Qatar);
- The US becomes the key supplier for Asia as a whole, dynamically increasing shale oil production and LNG output given the high prices;
- He is letting the Arab allies in the Gulf know that they must pay extra for American protection (the hundreds of billions of dollars in investments by Arab sheikhs in the US economy, which Trump extracted from them last year, are no longer taken into account; let’s have more).
And although the vaunted American “unmatched” air and missile defense systems (Patriot, THAAD) have not lived up to the expectations in the Gulf zone (though not as stunningly disgracefully as the russian ones in Iran), nevertheless, the Arab clients of the US hardly have any other choice.
Since Trump and Co. are trying to monetize everything, this explains the maneuver towards putin. I have pointed out many times over the years that since the US became the world’s leading oil-producing country among the top three global leaders (US, Saudi Arabia, russia), in this configuration, an informal alliance of two leads to the defeat of the third. When Saudi Arabia was under the US security umbrella during the Cold War, their alliance inflicted an oil defeat on Iran and the USSR, leading to the collapse of the latter. When the Saudis befriended russia in the OPEC+ format, the world had high oil prices, which both needed – putin to fuel his war, and bin Salman for his grandiose megaprojects.
It seems (though not yet certain) that Washington has decided to play along with moscow. Each has their own motives, but the goal is the same – to make money. putin needs a high oil price, and it doesn’t matter if it comes at the cost of destroying his ally Iran and harming the UAE, which is lenient toward the kremlin. The important thing is that the fire in the Gulf lasts as long as possible.
Trump needs, at any cost, to show Xi a russian-style “Kuzka’s mother” [to threaten or shock] before the visit. And, of course, the phantasmagoric goal of detaching russia from China remains unchanged. As does the constant desire to make money from everything, including through the Witkoff – Dmitriev track, despite the fact that russia is secretly providing intelligence information to the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] on targets in the Arab countries of the Gulf zone, primarily on the US military bases in the region. But Trump doesn’t care that American soldiers will die.
So now we will witness another bout of Trump’s putinophilia, accompanied by increased pressure on Ukraine and the intensification of the Trump-appeasing group in the Ukraine’s President’s Office to sign a “peace agreement” and receive “security guarantees” from the US. We should not fall for this. Especially when the US and the Arabs want something from us in terms of our technologies and experience in countering cheap Iranian drones, the use of which by the IRGC is costing the “peacemaker” in the White House more and more.
