Consequences

If my wife can see the moon at the same time I can here, the distance apart feels smaller.

Reclined in the barber chair, Arabic music floated down from the speakers in the exposed matte black ceiling. The salon was earth tones and smelled of frankincense. Another sip of espresso. Fifty-fifty chance the song was about lost love or falling in love. Most Arabic songs were one or the other. Mohammed took the espresso cup from me, then dabbing shaving cream along my beard line, tells me in his home country of Iran, the espresso is served with small piece of dark chocolate. 

While getting the beard lined up with a straight razor, Mohammed and I chat casually about the region and current events. He is living in exile here with his wife, unable to return to Iran. I didn’t ask the reason, that is his business. We both miss four seasons and mountains. Neither of us enjoy the sweltering heat that is the gulf in summer and the too short winters where you only need a jacket for three weeks. His family is in Tehran. He speaks to them sometimes, when the power is not out. Are they ok? Of course they say yes, but of course they are lying so I don’t worry about them, he says. I nod, thinking about my wife, suddenly thankful I don’t have to worry about her being hit by a JSSAM.

Mohammed did not understand why Trump will leave the regime in power. Now nothing will change. No, he continues, actually it will be even worse now. Why did the U.S. do this if it was going to be worse?

The same question echoes across the years from conversations in Afghanistan to Africa, now Arabia. I couldn’t tell him the U.S. government is a cruel, unforgiving mistress who did not care about him, his family, or me and mine either. I told him half the truth.

Iran had been prepared to take the pain and willing to fight. The U.S. appears to be unable or unwilling to militarily do regime change and restore commercial shipping to the strait. Now the world is trying to find a path forward.

Mohammed placed a cool lavender infused towel on my face. It will be worse he said, but we do our best and go on. I breathed in the lavender. We do our best and go on. Simple, not always easy.

Iran continues to use missiles, drones, small boats, and satellite targeting to dictate the flow of trade through sea lanes vital to global trade. The U.S. is unable or unwilling to reopen the strait for commercial shipping. I continue to think this is an underappreciated fact. 

The U.S. military backs the U.S. dollar, but underlying both is control of global trade.

Military might and the strength of the currency have flowed from the control of trade for thousands of years. What is new to us in the last 500 years or so is a land power exerting control over sea lanes and the dominant maritime power not able to stop it and take back control of the trade route. 

Currently the U.S. is doing a blockade of the Iranian blockade in the hopes of choking them out and making them agree to a deal. This is not the same as the U.S. opening the strait by military force to restore the flow of trade. A blockade of a trade route does not help countries that participate in the U.S. system and depend on the U.S. ensuring the free flow of trade through the sea lanes.