TOKYO: US-Israeli hostilities against Iran could spiral into a third world war if the escalation continues, a renowned American economist ...
TOKYO: US-Israeli hostilities against Iran could spiral into a third world war if the escalation continues, a renowned American economist and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University (New York), Professor Jeffrey Sachs said in an interview with the Japanese portal Nikkei Asia.
According to Sachs, "The war will end if and only if global revulsion at US and Israeli aggression force these countries to stop. Short of that, we are likely to see the Middle East in flames and the world in an energy and economic crisis unprecedented in modern history. The war could easily turn into a global conflagration, effectively into World War III," the expert stated.
Sachs added that the fighting could spiral out of control, as the US and Israel "are dead set on hegemony in the Arab world and West Asia – one that combines Israeli territorial expansion with American-backed regime control across the region. The ultimate goal is a Greater Israel that absorbs all historic Palestine, combined with compliant Arab and Islamic governments stripped of genuine sovereignty, including on choices as to how and where they export their oil and gas."
The professor emphasized that the US administration and the Jewish state are wrong if they think that regional countries want Israel to behave so uncontrollably. "No country across the region wants Israel to run wild as it is doing." According to the expert, "No country wants its hydrocarbon exports under effective US control." Sachs warned that if hostilities in the Middle East continue, they will plunge the world into an unprecedented energy crisis, and their economic consequences could be "catastrophic."
The United States and Israel launched a military operation against Iran on February 28. Major Iranian cities, including Tehran, were struck. The White House justified the attack by citing alleged missile and nuclear threats from Iran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced a retaliatory operation, targeting sites in Israel. US military bases in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were also hit. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and some other key Iranian leaders were killed in the joint US-Israeli attack.
Iranian authorities also decided to close the Strait of Hormuz to vessels associated with the US, Israel, and countries that supported the aggression against the Islamic Republic. On March 25, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced that Iran had allowed passage through the Strait of Hormuz to friendly countries, including Russia, India, Iraq, China, and Pakistan.
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