Rachel Reeves takes on the black hole. Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images
In the Seventies, a Middle Eastern war precipitated a global energy shock and stagflation, and a US president invoked populist pleas to the silent majority against the counterculture. As the gold standard and the post-war Bretton Woods system teetered on the brink of collapse, the monetarist economist Milton Friedman observed that “only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”
Today we have a surplus of crises but a deficit of ideas lying around. There has been no significant wage growth in the UK for more than a decade. Productivity has flatlined. The political convulsions of Scottish separatism, Corbynism and Brexit have rocked established politics. The economy has been battered by the quick succession of a global pandemic and proliferating geopolitical tremors. Trust in the political class has never been lower, as Westminster’s elites flounder around looking for the levers that say “activate new growth model”.
Against all this, Rachel Reeves’s Budget will offer up the kind of Fabian reforms one might expect from a former Bank of England bureaucrat: public accounting tweaks that alter the measures of public assets versus liabilities on the balance sheet, which should free up significantly more capital for an investment-starved public realm. After a long period in which the UK has seriously neglected its fixed assets and capital stock, an overdue focus on restorative projects with broad multipliers, in energy, transport and housing, could help nudge growth upwards.
The question is whether Labour’s incrementalism and promises of delayed gratification will satisfy a restless public. “Fixing the foundations” is hardly an alluring slogan when those economic foundations are functionally imperceptible to most people. The tangibility and immediacy of an increase in the bus fare cap will surely have more cut-through than broad-brush promises of “a decade of renewal”, especially when the British public has stopped listening to much of what politicians have to say anyway. Reeves seems intent on burning through piles of goodwill and political capital to pursue negligible cost savings.
Perhaps Labour’s biggest problem is the lack of a coherent narrative thread that binds its policy choices together. It won the election by successfully appearing as the inoffensive, default option against incumbents who were visibly wearied by 14 years in power. But there was no ideological bedrock underlying their campaign. There have been only vague nods towards a post-neoliberal “securonomics”, edging towards a more interventionist, activist state encapsulated by GB Energy, the National Wealth Fund, and the New Deal for Workers.
This series of scattered and languid proposals do not make up the kind of paradigm shift that would be required to trigger a genuine reindustrialisation of left-behind Britain, or a spurt of rapid, sustained growth via the energy transition — the preferred route of the so-called “modern-supply-side” advocates in Labour-aligned think tanks. It all looks rather like a reheated Johnsonism, condemned by the Right at the time as “neo-Brownite social-democracy” and “green paternalism”.
It’s doubtful whether such a vision, structured to align with “Bidenomics” in the US and designed to expand domestic green industrial capacities, could be achieved by a low-productivity service economy heavily reliant on imported manufactures and cheap labour. Even for Joe Biden, the pouring of hundreds of billions of government money into green investments and social programmes did little to improve his personal popularity ratings. America’s now cross-party consensus on decoupling and trade protectionism is unlikely to translate here: ambitious stimulus programmes are more difficult to finance when you don’t enjoy the exorbitant privilege afforded by the US dollar system. And for all the talk of creating new domestic supply chains, the turbines, solar panels and cables that will power the switch to renewables will likely continue to be made in faraway lands with more successful adherence to developmentalist industrial policy.
If not British Bidenomics, then what? It seems that the well of ideas has run dry. Yet our country wasn’t always so intellectually slothful. Half a century ago, at the last nadir of what the Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratiev would have described as a “long wave” of growth and slump, an epochal battle of ideas played out. On one side, there was a resurgent neoliberal Right with the ailing social-democratic consensus in their sights, and on the other a socialist Left advocating for an alternative economic strategy: public ownership, withdrawal from the European Economic Community, and a revitalised production walled behind tariffs, state planning agreements and price controls. This was the kind of autarkic, Left-wing economic nationalism purveyed by a young Jeremy Corbyn and his mentor Tony Benn.
In the end, the Right emerged as champions. The success of Thatcherism in presenting itself as the authentic voice of Middle England — and even attracting the support of many working-class voters in alliance with a reinvigorated City of London — means that the vision of the neoliberal Right has defined the political economy of the past 40 years.
For better or for worse, a new model emerged from the last crisis. But there has been no such luck in Britain today, on the Left or Right. Thatcherism’s defeat of the Left and its institutions was so total, and the embrace of market managerialism so widespread, that any grasping towards an alternative has been treated as utopian. We now lack the hegemonic infrastructure, the will, the capacities, and the political imagination to define a project that would contradict the whims of a faceless disciplining agent we call the bond markets.
Recent rejuvenation attempts have largely failed. Brexit, which promised a contradictory amalgamation of a free-trading Global Britain, a low-tax Singapore-on-Thames, alongside a more robust statism that insulated workers from steady influxes of migrant labour. The tension in that project is yet to be resolved. Corbynism, meanwhile, offered salvation to urban progressives, a “socialism with an iPad” that toyed with ideas such as a universal basic income, a four-day week, and supposedly new, co-operative forms of public ownership for a 21st-century economy. Its millennial socialist tendency sat alongside more traditional, social-democratic and Left-populist calls for green Keynesianism, workers on company boards, higher minimum wages, more police officers and a rejection of austerity. But despite the popularity of its individual policies, the Labour Left was widely seen as representing an effete, metropolitan activist class, obsessed with issues that were alien to most of the electorate. This was a party that could spend entire summers arguing about antisemitism, Corbyn’s former associations with militant Islamists and provisional Republicans, and ubiquitous equivocations over what constitutes a woman.
The failure of contemporary Labour Leftism, then, is rooted in the fact that the potential for social democracy is being constantly foiled by an extreme adherence to cultural ultra-liberalism on the one hand — with gender self-ID, police and prison abolition, open borders or support for reparations taken as unassailable axioms — and militant, vocal sympathy with ultra-conservative terrorist groups on the other. It’s a contradictory package almost lab-designed to repel a public that is broadly sympathetic with more anodyne promises of wealth redistribution, a more muscular statism, or investment-led growth and reindustrialisation.
If the Left is failing to conjure a workable political vision, then the Right is faring little better. The noises from the Conservative leadership contest signal little more than a desire to relitigate culture wars and restate commitments to a deregulatory agenda and small-state, low-tax principles. But elements of free-marketeer policy prescriptions have crept into Labour discourse, too, via the intoxicating panacea offered by Yimbyism. Six weeks ago, political Twitter was abuzz with talk of an essay about planning reform called “Foundations: Why Britain has Stagnated”. In 16,000 words, it offered up an answer to Britain’s perpetual stagnation: building regulations set by Clement Attlee. These ideas have become part of Westminster common sense, and Labour seems keen to pursue them. Push through planning reform, the SW1 wonks say, and we can get Britain building again, unlocking entrepreneurial animal spirits and creating a great sea of new-builds, with Barratt Britain as Keir Starmer’s Krushchevka.
Though these ideas have infiltrated the Westminster zeitgeist, nobody in the real world is listening. On the street, you’d struggle to find anyone with an opinion on planning reform. For the micro-class of policymakers and their adjuncts in the media, political advocacy and corporate consultancy, talk our byzantine planning system is ubiquitous. The Labour front bench will be praying their fixes to the issue deliver a Big Bang moment, bringing much-needed extra revenues to the Treasury.
But planning reform does not constitute a new growth model. Nor will it deliver the enormous amounts of extra money that will be required to restore services and state capacity. For the analysis in “Foundations” does not account for the real moment of divergence for Britain’s post-war growth trajectory — 2008. Since the government pumped billions into the financial system following the collapse of trans-Atlantic banking, both political parties have struggled to find a replacement for a zombie form of highly financialised capitalism. It limps on life support, delivered in the form of quantitative easing, a decade of negative real interest rates, bailouts, and now a trend for what business groups describe as “de-risking” and “crowding in”, the new “productivist” cover for corporate subsidy.
Our era of stagnation has produced extreme political ramifications as the old party system hangs on by a thread, despondency and cynicism reign supreme, and the legitimacy of the entire political class has been thrown into question by the endless failure to deliver. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci would have defined it as an interregnum, a transitory period of chaotic impulses when “the old is dying, but the new cannot be born”. Previous eras of stagnation or decline have produced broad-based movements and ideas that have done away with the old and welcomed in the new. Yet today’s Budget will certainly not end our long interregnum.
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SubscribeUnintended consequences…
Suppose Iran retaliated by closing the Straits of Hormuz. No more Saudi oil. No more Qatari gas. There would be a full-blown global energy crisis.
What then?
And the (Sunni) Saudis–who are even more dependent on selling oil and who despise Iran and had no qualms about bombing the bejesus out of (Shite) Iran’s Houti clients in Yemen for years–would be OK with none of their oil going through the strait of Hormuz and their economy cratering?
The Saudis totally failed in Yemen.
The point is not whether they failed to win an asymmetric war (as has the U.S. in most of its asymmetric conflicts). The point is that the Saudis have demonstrated willingness to use the formidable lethal force they possess to defend their interests and that their greatest priority is selling oil. In no scenario can Iran close the straits without answering to Saudi Arabia.
Undermined by Iranian paid for bureaucrats in the West.
Sane people ask questions like that
Neocons are not sane people, they have an unquenchable thirst for blood
Sane people don’t think it’s a good idea to allow enemies to attack you constantly when you can stop them.
Sane people try to avoid making enemies in the first place.
And what have the Zionists been doing to the local Arabs since Israel’s creation?
The same thing the arabs have been doing to them since the time of Mohammed.
The Europeans should embrace fracking (like many of do in the USA) and reopen their nuclear plants.
Although, if there was no more Saudi oil, no more Qatari gas and a full-blown global energy crisis, the Greens would be happy. Isn’t that what they want?
The issue is infrastructure and of course price. Where the us is fracking they have existing infrastructure from the 60s.
No problem. Just need a pipeline from alberta to the coast.
Turn on the windmills.
great joke.
An earnest lady at a local “Earth Fair” last week told me we are surrounded by sea so there is no limit to how many wind turbines we can install. So our future supply is assured! What a relief.
Mmm..unintended consequences could work both ways. Without wishing to tempt fate but Iran would need an air force to close the Gulf, even just to support land-launched missiles. (The few F-14 they have are really old). With the USS Abraham Lincoln strike force currently parked on their front door and itching for fight they might rapidy regret it. Maybe Israel is helping the West to finally rediscover its mojo.
The Iranians have hypersonic missiles against which the US Navy has no defence. Be careful what you wish for.
The election of Trump next month will solve a lot of problems.
There was something decidedly Iranian about the 2020 US electoin and even more so the 2024 in UK when 80% of voters didn’t vote for the “winner”. Even in a free and fair election Trump would be up against it with the MSM, “security” services and corporate freeloaders in DC ranged against him. Add in the vote harvesting and outright fraud and its very unlikely he’ll prevail.
Assuming he’s allowed to stay alive.
Perhaps an easier solution is the re-election of Donald Trump as US President and his reimposition of maximum sanctions on Iran.
Returning the price of oil to where it was during Trump’s first Presidency would cripple both Iran and Russia. “Drill baby drill”.
That and reimposition of meaningful sanctions against the mad mullahs would cripple Iran-much to the dismay of our left leaning progressive bretheren-so-a win win.
The sanctions need to be on the criminal entity slaughtering tens of thousands in two nations, assassinating people in other countries and using 2000 lb bombs on babies sleeping in tents.,
Barack Obama has to shoulder some of the blame for taking the reins off Iran, both for what is happening in the ME and for what is happening in the US.
Iran is not the problem, Israel is. Israel is the aggressor, the hater, the terrorist state slaughtering babies and stealing land
Israel is the hater and the aggressor and terrorist state? If these regimes want to avoid military retaliation, I have a pro hack for them. Stop firing missiles into its territory and launching terror operations that deliberately target unarmed civilians.
You seem to forget in describing israel as the hater that the Oct 7th attack, which was focussed on the torture and killing of innocent people was initiated by Hamas and that the next day, prior to any Israeli response, Hezbollah started sending rockets into Israel, directed by their Iranian controllers. Israel has decided to address this terror. Whether it is strategically wise, time will tell. Whether the death toll of innocent civilians in Gaza and Lebanon is proportionate is also a question. What cannot be in question is that the ‘education’ and propaganda of hatred for ‘the Jews’ in much of the Middle East has paved the way for this war as well as the concomitant growth in right wing intolerant ethnonationalism in israel.
Sanctions do not work very well, iran has a black fleet that circumvents sanctions.
https://www.politico.eu/article/iran-russia-cooperation-dodging-oil-sanctions/
In my opinion free trade is preferable, where free trade is allowed, further development follows. That’s not to say that Israel shouldn’t retaliate, and blow up whatever targets they decide are appropriate, just that actually sanctions do not work.
A return to free trade after Israel has concluded it’s war would drive better development, if iran is crippled economically there will continue to be civil unrest and low opportunities, which arguably would drive a continuation of the conditions that groups like hezbollah and hamas thrive in.
If the alternative is for Israel to sit on its hands while Iran develops nuclear weapons, continues to improve its delivery systems, and augments its client base, then perhaps now is the best time to meaningfully deter Israel’s greatest threat, Iran. Keep in mind that Israel was on the cusp of realizing a dazzling breakthrough diplomatic agreement with multiple significant Middle Eastern Islamic Countries (and had already done so with others in the Abraham Accords) when Gaza invaded. Many analysts believe the attack by Gaza on Israel was Iran’s deliberate strategy to derail the process of Israeli rapproachment with the wider Middle East. Iran realized that Islamic geopolitics was moving in a direction counter to Iranian priorities and toward marginalization of an Iranian regime the Sunni states did not trust. The only card Iran could play was to force Israel to become the bad guy again in the eyes of the Moslem world (at the expense of Gaza). Iran is weak. It must use proxy organizations like Hezbollah because its own restive Iranian population would overthrow Iran’s leaders in a heartbeat if they were asked to suffer and die in an invasion of Israel.
Interesting take on things. Let’s see what happens.
Iran does not want nuclear weapons, the paranoid stupidity though seems to rub off on cold blooded war mongering old men
You are freer with epithets than with evidence. For a regime that “does not want nuclear weapons” they have invested massively in achieving the ability to manufacture them. They are also the arms supplier of choice to the world’s terrorist organizations and supply weapons to Russia. Perhaps those are the kind of entities you identify with. Last time I checked they are all run exclusively by “cold blooded war mongering old men”, far, far more so than any Western nation. Here’s a link to a fashion choice that the Ayatollah thinks would look smashing on you Marilyn!!
https://www.amazon.com/XINNI-Muslim-One-Piece-One-Size-Overall/dp/B0993J1GV6/ref=asc_df_B0993J1GV6/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=692875362841&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=975143717287513450&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9026548&hvtargid=pla-2281435178058&psc=1&mcid=0181eb51f7013a76b67e6ecd6a4e6bad&hvocijid=975143717287513450-B0993J1GV6-&hvexpln=73
Iran has plenty of cheap oil that will last for years. Only a useful idiot would believe that Iran wants to develop nuclear power for peaceful use.
She’s already wearing one….
Let’s say Israel does it and then Iranians make good on their promise to strike Saudi terminals? Does anyone think the Saudi’s would not pick sides quickly? They will not choose Iran especially if U.S. backs Israel as it has promised.
Excellent policy. I hope Ukraine applies a broadly similar one to Russia.
Why attack Iran’s oil export facilities and gift the Iranian regime a propaganda coup at home and rile the Iranian sympathisers in Washington? Don’t interrupt the enemy when they’re making a mistake. The Iranian government syphoning off precious oil income for overseas paramilitaries is making the government very unpopular at home and diverting money from investment in its oil production, which has fallen from over 4mbpd to just over 3mbpd in just 8 years. As the gap between potential and actual oil output widens, the power-hungry outsiders in Tehran will increasingly agitate for change and offer the unrealised oil output as collateral to anyone that will fund their agitation. All Israel needs to do for now is stop Iran becoming a nuclear power, salt Iranian bids for foreign investment, and continue to lay waste to Iranian investments in its overseas paramilitaries.
As an aside, I note everyone seems OK to call Iran’s overseas paramilitaries what they are, “Shia militias”. But the media seems less keen to spell out what that actually means in plain English: Islamic, sectarian armies harassing, taking hostage and killing people who do not share their faith wherever they find them, be it Lebanon or Europe or Israel.
Why attack Iran’s oil export facilities and gift the Iranian regime a propaganda coup
I guess the possibility of Harris winning the election and the Obama mob digging their heels in, a strike earlier than later is probably viewed as the best course of action, before the US begins to strangle Israel.
One way to stop the Iranian nuclear program is to let Israel bomb it, after the IDF incapacitates Hezbollah later this month. For those of you supporting Ukraine, Israel can help there by bombing the Iranian drone sites.
Remember, Israel previously destroyed both the Syrian and Iraqi nuclear sites in development. Seems like Israel is one country that has success in stopping nuclear proliferation.
Israel has the nukes in the ME, the rest of the nations don’t want a bar of them, but god you Israel supporters are the most bloody thirsty cowards on earth.
The iranians have just, rather pointedly, put some rather large craters in the Negev in the region of the Israeli’s Dimona nuclear facility. The Israelis could well be worrying about nuclear waste proliferating from their if they’re not careful. Which of course they won’t be as their governing regime is packed with fundamentalist lunatics.
I agree with your note about “plain English.” That’s one reason I think the term “terrorist” is too broad, too obfuscating about actual intent. “Terrorism” is a tactic, not a goal. We should say “jihadists” or “radical Islamists.” (And yes, emphasize the differences between Shia and Sunni, Arab and Persian.) Their goal is totalitarian theocracy, the acknowledgment of which would make it more clear that this is a shared enemy of the entire secular West.
“…Jihadists, wholly committed to endless wars of conquest, and the imposition of ‘Islam’ on the whole world by fire, sword and slavery…and determined to obliterate every individual, every country, every culture and every other religion that resists them…who see themselves as the True Heirs of the Prophet…and will not rest until the whole world and everyone in it has come to ‘submission’…or is dead or enslaved”
A rather fuller clarification than your own, but one that we all need to hear, to understand, to accept…and to wage a defensive, just and unavoidable war against…
What a load of rot,
Because…? Isn’t what RS Foster has written what they claim for themselves?
How about the West just leaves the Middle East alone?
Wasn’t it overthrowing Mosadeq that started the whole Iranian chaos? Another brilliant move by those who are supposedly the best and the brightest…
Does that mean no arms supply to Israel? And if Israel did bomb the oil supply should the West stay out if it? In fact should, therefore, the West cease its judgement and bashing of Israel at the UN?
What exactly do we gain by supplying them with weapons? They have a nuclear arsenal. No actor in the region poses an existential threat to them.
How do you fight local conflicts with a nuclear arsenal? The point is leaving the Middle East to itself. Does that mean abandoning Israel? If so that means no more judgements, no more condemnation.
Israel just needs to listen to the resolutions and live up to them instead of endlessly slaughtering their neighbours.
If other countries wish to buy weapons there is no problem…provided they aren’t used on us.
Otherwise yes…and yes.
Interesting idea.
My recollection is that Mosaddegh nationalised Western (in those days mostly British) oil interests. He should have been bright enough to realise that “being overthrown” would be the inevitable result of that.
Yes he did. They were actually Iranian assets.
The West should have been bright enough to realise overthrowing an elected leader would also have an inevitable (adverse) result…which it duly did. It hasn’t worked out well in Ukraine either.
Well, I accept that things haven’t gone so well for Iran since that, but surely the British couldn’t be expected to sit by while their oil interests were stolen by some jumped-up socialist. As to Ukraine, it is probably worth pointing out that the “elected leader” who was “overthrown” was in fact a paid Russian stooge, which must now ne apparent to everyone, given that he lives in Russia.
Of course compensation needed to be paid…but the assets were Iran’s not Britain’s.
As for Ukraine…yes he was actually elected. And as for paid stooge, Ukraine now has…Zelensky who was stupid enough to believe the West’s promises that Russia would collapse through sanctions.
In all fairness had he accepted the peace deal he would have been murdered…but instead thousands of others are dead and Ukraine is devastated. Tough call, I know, but…
Think you might want to do a bit more historical research if you think Mossadegh was a “jumped up socialist”.
MC is quite correct that the British and Americans were the root cause of the problems in Iran. Iran might have been a wealthy, stable, perhaps even democratic country if left to its own devices in the 1950s.
We made Iran worse. We made Afgahanistan worse. We possibly made Libya worse.
Perhaps Reagan had a point: “I’m from the [US] government and I’m here to help” might be as unwelcome abroad as it is at home.
This isn’t written from an anti-British or anti-US angle. We just need to be a lot smarter about where we do – and do not – try to “help”.
Well, Mossadegh “got what was coming to him”. If he didn’t see it coming, he couldn’t have been too bright.
Regrettably it was Britain and the USA who were not very bright. Yes there was an immediate result by getting rid of him but the long term “blowback” has been very damaging for the West.
And in the end we ended up with none of the Iranian oil. Just as we ended up with none of the Suez Canal.
But I guess we had the Iranian oil when it really mattered – during WWII.
Oil supply is fungible.
All the actors in this conflict are paid stooges of someone, including Zelensky. We need to give up the pretence that there is not a significant pro-Russian faction in Ukraine.
Very few pro-Russian citizens left now. Like all wars, the invasion had the effect of crystallising that.
Indeed, since they’re now part of Russia, which has annexed the 4 Eastern oblasts.
“It hasn’t worked out well in Ukraine either.”
And if my grandma had wheels she’d be a bicycle.
While Ukrainians were busy issuing Yanukovych his walking papers the West was asleep. You’re going to need to get this straight or we might never become friends.
Really? The West was asleep…not a principal actor? Oh…OK then…
That’s a nice thought but the Middle East doesnt seem to want to stay put. Nor does it want to live peacefully with Israel.
Bit of a generalisation, that. Saudi Arabia and a good few other smaller Arab nations were on the point of normalisation through the Abraham accords, and that is precisely why Hamas decided to carry out their atrocity last year.
You dont see any of those other nations aiding Israel do you? They’re happy to sit back and watch Iran do the dirty work.
They most certainly are NOT happy to see Iran doing this. They are Iran’s enemies: they were on the point of becoming Israel’s allies before Oct7.
I’ve got a bridge you might want to buy.
Also there is some quite large and important natural gas reserves under the eastern med that are very important to the west strategically that Israel manages.
Why am I constantly being put through the captcha challenge over and over as a paid up subscriber?
It’s not just you. We all suffer that indignity.
Yeah, i’ve noted it. It’s pathetic.
It’s because UnHerd recognises your unique skills in identifying buses and bridges.
They never respond. Maybe there’s no one there at Unherd, just an AI in a sound proof room.
In space, there is no one to hear ChatGPT scream.
UnHerd used to respond to requests, but I guess they closed the complaints‘ department. I was quite annoyed about clicking on the little squares of bicycles and busses to confirm that I am not a robot and also about getting the French edition every day. It takes quite some skill to press the tiny French flag to switch to the U.K. edition. Why UnHerd do you make it so difficult to be a paid member of your magazine?
It’s because you’re UnHeard?
Busses and bridges? That would be a relief. I keep getting motorcycles and bicycles.
Again, they appreciate your ’rounded’ skillset.
Few have such gifts oh wise one
I think unherd’s website is run by an unpaid intern, or at least it gives the impression that it is.
UnPaid.com
Are you becoming better at identifying bikes and traffic lights?
I hate it when there is a tiny sliver of a traffic light in a square, and I don’t know whether to click that square or nor. Also, is a rear view mirror part of a motorcycle?
I’m also a subscriber and I would like to know why some articles, by no means all, seem to have the comment thumbs up/down permanently turned off? It’s true that my own dismay that nobody at all approved my brilliant comment is eased by seeing that often nobody at all has approved any comments on that page. But it’s hard to believe nobody liked or disliked any of the comments? There’s something here that needs tweaking.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you
Somehow more than 40,000 dead isn’t enough for Edward here.
Author seems not to have looked at a map and fully appreciated the strategic choke point that is the Straits of Hormuz. Iran would immediately look to close this if attacked more directly, and that would quite possibly provoke a worldwide recession.
Furthermore the Abraham Accords would be damaged as that impacts on those Gulf states now more sympathetic to Israel.
The Author displays too much myopic desire to have a dig at Obama and Democrats and thus undermines his own credibility. The reason there has been reluctance to hit Iran more directly has always been related to this geographical issue. One has to be smarter.
Well, this situation, like that in Ukraine, is largely a consequence of weakness and incompetence in Washington during Democratic administrations. So he’s got a point.
He may have a point about the approach to Iran adopted by Biden administration but’s it’s marginal and his primary suggestion was bomb their oil handling terminals. That sort of strategic stupidity why he’s writing articles I guess and not working in a senior Govt role faced with difficult choices.
As regards ‘marginal’ – anyone who thinks Hamas and Hezbollah just started preparing their strategies and attacks when Biden got elected v naive. Planning for years and in fact there is a case the Abraham Accords forced their hand, and Trump likes to take the credit for that.
There is no way the pathetic Iranian “navy” could accomplish bockading the Straits of Hormuz if the US Navy chose to prevent them.
You don’t need a navy when you have hundreds of land-based anti-ship missiles… and artillery
Jim C says it KA, and furthermore the threat and uncertainty enough to trigger a major economic shockwave. if Lloyds withdraw insurance for your tanker are you still sailing it through the Straits?
And Xi would be delighted if more of the US fleet tied up in the Gulf.
Would Xi be delighted with little oil reaching China?
Interesting point AF – yes he may see strategic danger in a worldwide recession too. However Xi has the overland pipes to Iran and of course Putin’s Oil if he needs more of it. Currently he’s screwing Putin on the price.
No matter how much we blame the Obama /Hillary foreign policy debacle and insane destructive thinking, there is still more to despise.
‘Despising’ an emotion that tends to cloud clear thinking in my experience UR
My inexpert assessment is Iran is cr@pping its pants already. It is very happy to make a lot of noise whilst pushing its proxies to do its dirty work and die for the privilege. However it is not prepared to risk another direct attack on Israel. The last one back in April was totally ineffectual but the very restrained response from Israel: a single drone landed close to the nuclear processing facility sent a very chilling message – we can hurt you far more than you can hurt us.
Trump had his foot on Iran’s throat. Biden reverted to Obama’s appeasement policy and what we are seeing now is exactly what happens when you try to appease despots – ask Nevile Chamberlain about that if you are still unsure
The effects Luttwak talks about do not need to be achieved militarily. Once Trump is back the sanctions regime he employed last time will have the effect. The question is does Iran have the nerve to directly strike Israel and risk an Israeli military response of will the mad mullah just hide away in his bunker until Trump comes back? My money is on the latter.
Khamenei is hiding in a cave and hoping that the Israelis didn’t attach a nano chip to any of his robes. So far the Israelis stayed away from directly targeting Iranian leaders, although we don’t quite know, why the helicopter of the former president crashed. It might have been just the bad weather or a warning sign from Mossad, that nobody is safe in the regime.
Iran has not attacked anyone for over 220 years, they are not the problem, The US has attacked, invaded, bombed, changed regimes and created every terrorist group on the planet since 1946 and the Israhell place has bombed all their neighbours over and over to steal land, water and resources.
Ignoring last night, ignoring Iraq, ignoring their agents of course, a peace loving regime!
The religion of peace
The present day Irn is a product of Khomeini who threatened the World.
Do hundreds of missiles not count as an attack? Does basing your identity on destroying another country and people not count as an attack when it involves organising and funding groups actively trying to destroy Israel? Does being responsible directly and using Hezbollah to keep Assad in power to murder and displace millions of Syrians count as an attack? Does empowering the Houthis to unleash devastating civil war in Yemen count as an attack? Does selling thousands of drones to Russia to murder Ukrainians count as ‘not a problem’?
If Iran stopped funding and directing terror no one would be any threat to them.
Well, Iran fired missiles at Israel last night.
I completely support Israeli right to stomp out the vile terrorists and their puppet masters. However, there is a strategic consideration: don’t start ww3. We are a precarious point, thanks to corrupt WEF influence. The IDF has demonstrated an ability for creative problem solving since the 07 October debacle. Bombing Iranian oil is obvious…and far too perilous.
Wow, what an Unheard view! Israel innocent white hat, everyone else evil black hat! I have never heard such a view before. I am so thankful for UnHerd where we get to hear these non-propaganda mainstream views on things. Can’t wait to renew my subscription!
I thought I was alone at being appalled by this. Otherwise intelligent people acting as if the world is a video game. Trouble is, you just can’t up your health and return from the dead.
But the decision to attack, Mr Raz said, was taken “by Hamas, based on its own interests, arising from the Palestinian reality”.
“Did Hamas use Iranian aid? Definitely, yes. Did Iran have an interest in this action? Yes. Does Hamas need Iranian permission to operate? No.”
Hamas has been developing its elite units for several years, says Haim Tomer, the former Mossad official.
The whole article is one lie and distortion after another.
Hamas got almost all of its money from Qatar, and a few years back the Likudniks rushed in suitcases of cash to stop Hamas being toppled, because, in the words of Bibi, “anyone who doesn’t wish to see the establishment of a Palestinian state must support Hamas”.
Hamas were a fringe Islamic charity until they were fostered by Israel as a “counterweight” to the secular Fatah (ie, the usual divide-and-conquer strategy used by expansionist psychopaths since history began).
Prior to Oct 7, half the Israeli populace were out on the streets campaigning for Bibi’s resignation and indictment. The attack was a gift to the far-right hardliners in the Israeli cabinet, not Iran, and given this fact (and the fact the Israeli security services had detailed knowledge of Hamas’ plans a year in advance) anyone with half a brain should be wondering… “cui bono”?
The liberal democracies would wail, whine and whinge. How could Israel be so heartless and cruel? What a bleak day for human rights and international cooperation! We’re all doomed! The poor innocent Iranians who never really meant it when they called for the total destruction of Israel, America, UK and, in fact, everyone who isn’t Shia Islam. Woe! Woe!
Maybe a relaunch is required…from Unherd to Herd.
Oh, good; let’s take a tenuous situation and make it worse. What a grand idea. How much American blood and treasure should we expect to waste on this folly, and how many thousands of people who are of no interest to us must die as Ukrainians keep doing?
I hate to break it to the professor – and it’s always professors with these ideas – but the world does not exist in a vacuum and the US is not the only large military that might get involved. Attacking Iran’s oil revenues is the same thing as attacking Iran itself. Do we think neither China nor Russia will notice?
A neocon has never come across a middle-eastern country he does not want to invade or just blow up. All the better if he can get Israel to do it for him.
You’re so close Lennon, just one more step
The sun is shining on the Sunni side but meanwhile on the Shiite side it’s all shiite
Destroying Iran’s oil supply would be pretty much the dumbest thing Israel could do. Skyrocketing oil prices would harden the West against Israel, not exactly what it needs. It would also enrich Russia further.
Instead encourage more production by the rest of the world–per DJT–and pummel the price of oil, cutting Iran’s and Russia’s legs off while helping the rest of the world’s economies and citizens.
Oil consuming nations of the world unite. All you have to lose is your negative trade balance?
And it can’t go as poorly as the last initiative, “global warming extremism”.
Point taken, When you’re selling snake oil, don’t start believing your own lies.
Maybe we should try a bit harder to develop those supplies of gas and oil lurking under our green and pleasant land.
Maybe, the daft Secretary of State for energy should stop pretending that wind and solar can do the job.
(Especially when his twin brother, according to this organ, is making a packet from this game).
Luttwak is a degenerate warmongering sc*bag.
Anyone who supports the genocidal, Apartheid, megalomaniacal state of Israel automatically forfeits the right to be considered fully human.
Of course the only problem in the world is democracy like Israel and not islamofascists and dictatorships like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
Israel is a democracy the way apartheid South Africa was a democracy.
Besides, what has the method of electing representatives got to do with anything? It’s the behaviour of a government once it comes to power that matters, not how it came to power.
Who is buying the Iranian oil? Those buyers are complicit. Who are those buyer, that are literally, supporting and financing Hama and Hezbollah?
India, Africa, China…. Maybe Truss was right. Time to get fracking.
Could Israel disable Iran’s Khark and Jask oil-export facilities without causing an environmental catastrophe? I hope so, and would welcome any other readers’ thoughts on this.
Gosh, Luttwak’s commentary is so unbiased it’s unherd of: he worked as a consultant for the US military, served in the IDF, was a roommate of über-neocon Richard Perle and wrote an article suggesting that US marines should storm the eastern beaches of Saudi Arabia. According to Wikipedia, that is.
There’s one major objection to such a plan that hasn’t been covered in the article: the effect on world crude oil prices should Iran’s exports suddenly leave the market.
As well as this, China is Iran’s main crude oil customer and would therefore be drawn strategically into the Israel conflict should Iran’s oil exports fail through Israel’s military action.
I’m not saying I oppose it mind you, it would be a highly effective way of hurting the Iranian regime without also directly hurting the Iranian people who, let’s not forget, have more reason to dislike the Iranian regime than the rest of us do.
Hyperinflation wouldn’t directly hurt the Iranian people?
Not like bombs and bullets would, no.
I support Israel against the Iranian regime, certainly, but that doesn’t mean I want to see Israel start a general military campaign that involves Iranian civilians dying.
Destroying Iran’s oil production may be something to consider when ‘drill baby drill’ Trump returns to the White House but in the interim Israel needs to stabilize its immediate security.
Israel can no longer afford to be concerned about what the world thinks; a world descending into chaos. Israel would be wise to consider a strategic response to the neo-Marxist fascists in the west demanding a cease fire and it begins with simple common sense i.e. refuse to feed a population that seeks Israel’s destruction.
To wit: 1) appeal to Israel’s greatest ally, the people of the United States, publically declaring there will be no more hostage negotiations until Hamas provides and accurate list of hostages and proof of life/death, then 2) refuse to participate in providing “humanitarian” aid to an enemy population while maintaining control of the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors to allow viable organization to do so without UNWRA, 3) make it clear Israel is doing nothing more than pushing Hezbollah north of the Litani per UNSC 1701, and 4) clearly state that when Hezbollah fires missiles Israel will respond not only in Lebanon but also strike Iranian military and economic infrastructure in equal measure.
Doing so would change the entire equation and put the neo-Marxist Obaiden administration in a corner.
There is little time to act given the end game of the Obama puppets in the White House is sanctioning Israel as a whole and an eventual ‘no-fly’ zone.
Why is Obama so in love with Iran and the mullahs? They are a religious dictatorship that brutalizes its own people, including executing gays, minorities, women who disobey…
Is he a closet Moslem?
Oil.
All this fighting over oil is making me feel more and more despaired at the UK’s present net zero policy.
Remember the all-powerful Harris-Biden Doctrine, supported by the Pentagon, US State Dept, Legacy US Media, Legions of Dem Fems, Soy Boys, Incels, and Domestic + Iranian Assasins to cripple Iran and propel a new Dawn of Democracy to SAVE the Iranian People: “Don’t.”
Wow! Impressive!
Remember that the US does not need Gulf oil; it still needs to buy oil, not for the energy, but because it does not have the heavy oils needed by some refineries, but the US buys that oil from Russia (sanctions don’t apply to things the US needs). That oil does not pass through the Straits of Hormuz, or the Bab el Mandeb, or the Straits of Malacca, and the Russians are notorious for fulfilling their side of a bargain, never mind what the political situation.
So disrupting world oil markets and a global depression are a feature, not a bug.
The US plan to be Number One is not premised on a prosperous world; if keeping the US as Number One requires depressing the rest of the world even lower than the US, then that’s a good plan.
If the USA was a woman, her name would be Tonya Harding,
Wouldn’t it help if Israel agreed to a two-state solution?
Neither party wants a “Two State Solution”.
Remember what happened when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005? Exactly.
Neocon propaganda at its purest. Israel has been conducting ethnic cleansing in Palestine for at least 40 years. It also appears that Ed Luttwak has a despairingly incomplete knowledge of Iranian affairs, since he asserts that the regime is unpopular. As a matter of fact the regime enjoys a certain degree of popularity, otherwise it would have collaped long ago. It has managed to galvanise a society against the West an it was facilitated by the West in doing so.
It must be done in such a way that the Iranian regime can’t use it as an alibi for the country’s woes nor a patriotic rallying point.
Recall that Stalin’s regime was tottering in 1941 until the German invasion allowed Stalin to pose as the defender of the motherland in a patriotic war.
Look IDF won’t have boots on the ground and Iranians know they have been at war with Israel for years… they aren’t all Jihadis
Agreed.
If Iran oil was a target it would have been hit long ago when Trump was in. The powerful USA Jewish lobby will not desert Israel like the US abandoned Kabul. A lot hinges on the November elections, increasingly going badly for the Democrats with their ridiculous clown bimbo Harris leading the retreat. Watch the Mullahs and IIRG Generals the minute Trump wins. They’ll be ‘holidaying’ in Moscow, Doha and Islamabad. Mossad will be watching closely. So will whoever makes up the Tehran underground resistance.
Ah I see the recurrent phantasm of the latent ‘pro-Western opposition’ which has seduced men to such folly since the days of Prester John.
After Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria are we as electors still to take seriously the suggestion that whatever polity follows on from the Western backed overthrow of the Ayatollahs would be, in any way, sympathetic to ‘Western’ interests and objectives? And that it would be able to sustain that sympathy for any length of time while answering to an enfrachised electorate in a legislative Islamic democracy?
Would it not simply be another masterpiece of conusion to go with all the other debacles and disasters which have turned the near east into a charnel house already.
I can’t understand why it doesn’t bother the rest of the world that a violent racist like Netanyahu can order the use of nuclear weapons. If you were to run a book on which country would be most likely to use them first, Israel would be way out in front, running easy.
Russia for me. Putin is a complete lunatic.
Agree. Destroy their source of power. For goodness sake stop the prevaricating and do it quickly. But, as no one saw the the exploding pager attack, can’t help thinking something equally creative may happen.