Well folks it looks as if we have another thoughtful guest post from @Albertagarbage aka Alex.

I have been re-reading Nassim Taleb’s book “the black swan” and in its first chapter he talks about the clearly telegraphed punch of the Lebanese civil war that no one saw coming. I’d like to invite you to join me in a bout of retrospective thinking if you would. It is currently 2021 and the world has witnessed a military conflict with Iran that seemed to just happen out of the blue, no one saw it coming the day before it happened. Why did no one see it coming?

It is April 2019 though, and currently there is no military conflict with Iran. But let’s look at the current state of Iranian international relations with the US, who is the current war initiator in chief. Iran has been widely recognized as a backer of the Houthi militias engaged in a civil war in Yemen with the other side being backed by KSA. The US government has been applying steadily increasing sanctions designed to apply economic pressure to Iran in order to persuade them to give up nuclear/missile/existential ambitions. The US government has recently designated much of the Iranian armed forces as a terrorist organization due to its support of Hezbollah or whatever reason they gave. A new leader of the recently designated terrorist group/Iranian military was appointed who is recognized as being far more hardline and aligned with the Ayatollah who is increasingly provocative of the US. Iran has promised to engage in a military blockade of the strait of Hormuz if the US acts to block its oil exports, which they just said they would.

If a military encounter proceeded from this standpoint it would be looked at as having a clearly lit path, yet no one is currently talking about an impending military encounter. Are we completely blind to the possibility of future devastating events and can only clearly trace the route to them after the fact?

I’m not predicting that this event will happen or won’t, I have no idea what the future will bring. But if the last few years have taught me anything it’s that my ability to predict the future is deeply coloured by my own ideology and opinions. One thing does appear clear, the path to a war with Iran looks quite neatly paved by our current political reality.

Alex Lindsay:

Alex is an energy industry technical expert with experience in most areas of oil and gas upstream operations and a keen interest in oil market analysis. A civil engineer by education and a driller by passion, always on the look out for grey and black swans in the energy market. The views expressed in any of Alex’s articles reflect the sentiment of his current portfolio.

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