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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 1-Jan-2015
1-Jan-15 World View -- The three most important dangers for 2015

Web Log - January, 2015

1-Jan-15 World View -- The three most important dangers for 2015

Iran-Saudi Arabia tensions increase further as oil prices fall

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Happy New Year to everyone!


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Iran-Saudi Arabia tensions increase further as oil prices fall

Prices of West Texas Intermediate oil fell another 82 cents on Wednesday, to $53.27 per barrel. It was just few months ago that the price was over $100 per barrel, and oil exporting countries, including Iran, Russia and Venezuela, are facing financial crises as a result.

Saudi Arabia is refusing to cut production in the face of falling oil prices, and many Iranians are accusing the Saudis of purposely letting prices fall in order to conduct economic warfare on Iran. According to an article in the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) weekly newsletter:

"The most recent Aal-Saud oil war against Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, waged at the command of the American bosses, is the newest and most overt Aal-Saud hostility... First of all, the new Saudi oil war proves once again that as long as [Iran's] budget is based [almost entirely] on oil, the enemy can exploit this weapon in order to pressure Iran. For this reason, there needs to be an initiative, once and for all, so that [Iran's] revenues will not be oil-based; therefore, senior Iranian political and economic leaders must seriously address the 'resistance economy' [plan] emphasized in recent years by [Supreme] Leader [Ali Khamenei], so that we can neutralize weapons of this kind.

Now that Saudi Arabia is using all its capabilities to harm Iran, the Islamic Republic [of Iran] can also use all the means at its disposal to pressure this obsolete, deteriorating regime. Iran has many options for harming Saudi Arabia. Because this tyrannical, medieval family is now at its nadir, all Iran needs to do is to use a single one of these means so that nothing remains of the entity named the Aal-Saud regime or of Saudi Arabia itself.

Increased public protests, particularly in the oil-rich eastern [and largely Shi'ite-majority] areas of Saudi Arabia, have undermined the legitimacy of Saudi [rule]. These anti-[Saudi] regime protests are not unique to this part of Saudi Arabia; they are [also] happening in other parts of it. Additionally, the Houthis [in Yemen], who are considered Aal-Saud's sworn enemies, are at Saudi Arabia's back door [Yemen]; all they have to do is lift one finger for the disintegrating Aal-Saud corpus to collapse.

Saudi Arabia no longer has the respect it once had from its Arab neighbors – and has serious problems with some of them. On the other hand, its support for the terrorist organization ISIS, and its operation of it, has spawned great hatred of Saudi Arabia in public opinion, in both the region and the world. Elements of ISIS that have been fattened by the Saudi regime have become sworn enemies of Saudi Arabia. Apparently, Saudi Arabia's free oil money cannot stop the increase in the weakness of the Aal-Saud regime."

Other analysts list serious problems facing the Saudi regime:

On top of that, Saudi Arabia is facing a looming succession crisis as the 91-year-old King Abdullah has been taken into a Riyadh hospital. The country's next ruler will almost certainly be a generation or two younger, and all the above problems could suddenly become more serious. Memri and Al Monitor and Business Insider and Platts Financial

The three most important dangers for 2015

No one can seriously doubt that the world has become a much more dangerous place in 2014, and so now is a good time to review the most three most important dangers to watch out for in 2015:

Any one of these three could explode in 2015, and they're interrelated in the sense that one of these major crises could be the trigger for the others.

There is one crisis that isn't as dangerous as I'd expected. I thought that Ebola would have spread far more than it has already, but it hasn't. The mistake that I made was that I didn't believe it was possible for Ebola to spread so wildly throughout Western Africa, and stop at the borders of Mali and Côte d'Ivoire. But in fact that has happened, and I'm still astonished that the international community was successful in doing that.

The Ebola crisis is far from over, and it's still possible that there may be major outbreaks in other places, especially war zones and crowded cities. But for now, it looks like the worst is not going to occur.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Jan-15 World View -- The three most important dangers for 2015 thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (1-Jan-2015) Permanent Link
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