‘Crude’ pretexts and the US drumbeats of war
By Mostafa Shirmohammadi
Staff writer
A striking pattern links the countries that the administration of US President Donald Trump has recently struck militarily or threatened to attack. Venezuela, Iran, Iraq and Nigeria all sit on vast reserves of crude oil.
Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, has for some time become a central focus of the Trump administration’s confrontational posture.
According to The Atlantic, upon returning to the White House, Trump tasked his envoy to Venezuela Richard Grenell with helping pave the way for US companies to gain access to Venezuela’s huge oil and mineral wealth.
Washington has ratcheted up its rhetoric against President Nicolas Maduro, seeking to oust the leftist leader under the pretext of his alleged role — and that of his country — in trafficking drugs to the US.
Yet the justification for picking on Venezuela appears, at best, flimsy if not absurd. Compared with certain Latin American and Central American states — well-known for decades as major producers of cocaine and heroin — Venezuela’s role in the drug trade is nothing.
That Washington would overlook those centers of drug production and cartels, only to direct its rhetoric on combating illegal trafficking at Caracas and accuse Maduro of acting as “the head of a narcotics enterprise running drugs into the United States,” is quite laughable.
An old Persian parable captures the logic concisely.
A wolf drinking upstream tells off a lamb downstream for muddying the water.
“The water’s flowing from you to me,” the lamb hits back. “There’s no way I’m messing it up from down here.”
The moral of the story is clear; a bully does not need a real reason. If they want to put up a fight, they will just make up any excuse.
Nigeria — tenth globally in crude oil reserves — has also come under pressure from Trump. In a video posted on Truth Social this week, he uttered an explicit threat of potential military strikes against a country considered one of Washington’s key partners in Africa. His stated rationale was that Islamic militants were killing Christians in Nigeria.
Trump warned that If the Nigerian government doesn’t “move fast” to stop “terrorists” from killing Christians, “there’s going to be hell to pay.”
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