News Review 08/10/2022

Biden’s Global Economic War Employing Oil and Inflation

The bitter rivalry between the world’s great powers has come to affect almost every element of life. This week, the American puppet, Saudi Arabia marginally lowered crude production to sustain high oil prices. This is being presented as a move against US President Joe Biden but it is well known to those with sound awareness of international politics that King Salman and his son do not act except in accordance with US policy. According to the Washington Post:

European economists worried about a heightened risk of recession and a bolstered Russia on Thursday, after OPEC Plus, the coalition of oil-producing nations led by Russia and Saudi Arabia, announced that it will slash oil production by 2 million barrels per day.

The coalition’s plans prompted a blistering reaction from officials at the White House, which had aggressively lobbied the consortium to continue production at current levels or higher.

While initial reactions were more muted in the European Union, the production cut comes as the bloc of 27 nations braces for a sharp slowdown in economic growth linked to higher energy prices. The E.U.'s industrial powerhouse, Germany, reported a worse-than-anticipated decline in manufacturing orders on Thursday, raising recession fears.

Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at Brussels-based economic think tank Bruegel, said the production cut “will sustain inflation and make Europe’s energy crisis even more complicated.”

If the US wished, it could easily force a reduction in world oil prices, but America seeks to exploit even this in its great power rivalry, even while war is at Europe’s doorstep. Indeed, the already-high inflation referenced here has itself been a consequence of US policies. US President Joe Biden massively injected funding into the American economy last year during the Covid crisis to accelerate the US out of its recession, knowing full well how inflationary this would be. Then this year, the US is aggressively ramping up interest rates, to control its own inflation but at the expense of sucking in huge currency flows from the rest of the world, which again damages their economic activity. According to an article last month at Business Insider:

Europe looks to be headed for a recession — and its loss could be a gain for the United States as it looks to avoid a recession of its own.

In August, Goldman Sachs analysts put the probability of a recession over the next 12 months at 60% for Europe and 30% for the US.

If this forecast proves to be true, and Europe experiences a recession before the US, it could decrease the chances that the US experiences the same fate.

"The United States, as the largest economy in the world, the largest producer of oil and natural gas, and with one of the strongest recoveries, should be able to weather the storm in Europe," former Federal Reserve economist Claudia Sahm wrote in a September post. "Their hardship will sharply lower their demand and help bring our inflation down."

In the US, the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates to combat inflation. The farther the Fed has to go in order to see prices moderate, the greater the chance the economy bypasses a mild "growth recession" and experiences a more painful downturn. It's possible a recession in Europe, however, could help the US reduce inflation, avoid a recession of its own, and save millions of American jobs.

Competition between the world’s great powers is an inevitability. However, under Capitalism, this rivalry has possibly become the bitterest and fiercest that mankind has ever known. But with the permission of Allah (swt), the Muslim Ummah shall soon arise and re-establish the Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate) State on the method of the Prophet (saw) that shall unify the lands of Muslims, liberate their occupied territories, implement the Islamic sharia, restore the Islamic way of life, and carry the call for Islam to the entire world. The Khilafah State shall almost from its inception join the ranks of the great powers on account of its huge size, vast population, immense resources, unparalleled geography and unique Islamic ideology. The Khilafah State shall work to confront, contain and calm the other world powers, restoring the world to the general peace and prosperity that existed during the thousand years that Islam previously dominated world affairs bringing elevated values, culture and civilisation to all of humanity.

Khamenei Responds to Protests in Iran

This week, the Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, responded publicly to protests triggered by the death of a young woman in police custody and have led to the deaths of dozens. According to Aljazeera:

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has blamed the United States and Israel for protests that have gripped the country for more than two weeks, accusing the countries of trying to stop Iran’s “progress” ...

The 83-year-old leader had remained silent on the protests, which erupted after a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, died last month in the custody of Iran’s morality police.

“I say explicitly that these riots and this insecurity were a design by the US and the occupying, fake Zionist regime [Israel] and those who are paid by them, and some traitorous Iranians abroad helped them,” Khamenei told graduating cadets at a police university in Tehran.

“In the accident that happened, a young woman passed away, which also pained us, but reactions to her death before investigations [take place] ... when some come to make the streets insecure, burn Qurans, take hijabs off covered women, and burn mosques and people’s cars – they’re not a normal, natural reaction,” Khamenei said while surrounded by the chiefs of the police, army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Khamenei sought to further cast the unrest as part of a foreign effort to destabilise Iran, saying another “excuse” would have been found to destabilise the country if it were not for Amini’s death.

Khamenei is correct to accuse the West of exploiting the situation. Undoubtedly, they are always ready and quick to take advantage of any disturbance in Muslim lands. The West’s alleged position on not imposing dress codes is self-contradictory and hypocritical. However, the origin of the present disturbances is in fact a consequence of Khamenei’s and Iran’s willing long-term covert compliance with US foreign policy. The Iranian state is balanced on two pillars, the civilian government and the Revolutionary Guards or IRGC. Both of these pillars in fact act in accordance with US policy but often one is favoured over the other. During the US’s bitter Iraq war, America expanded the role of the IRGC, in order to assist with bringing Iraq under control. America then extended their role to Syria when the revolution broke out there as non-Muslim armies were by then afraid to directly enter Muslim lands. But in the past few years, as Iraq and Syria have stabilised, the US has been seeking to reduce the role of the IRGC. In order to respond to pushback on this from the IRGC, the Iranian government made a play of intensifying police enforcement of women’s dress. It is this that triggered the current protests.

With the permission of Allah (swt), the Muslim Ummah shall soon overthrow the agent ruling political class that seeks strength in alliance with the disbelievers.

Allah (swt) says in the Noble Qur’an:

(وَلَن یَجْعَلَ اللَّهُ لِلْكَافِرِینَ عَلَى الْمُؤْمِنِینَ سَبِیلًا) “And never will Allah give the disbelievers over the believers a way [to overcome them].” [An-Nisa: 141].