Joe Biden and the Democrat “endless war” crowd in Washington have sunk to a new low in their corrupt and immoral attempt to modulate the military action of Ukraine and Israel – telling them not to do anything that might raise the price of oil before the November
When Vice President Harris met privately with Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference in February, the Washington Post reported she told the Ukrainian leader to refrain from attacking Russian oil refineries, a tactic U.S. officials feared would raise global energy prices.
The request, according to officials familiar with the matter cited by the Washington Post, irritated Zelensky and his top aides, who view Kyiv’s string of drone strikes on Russian energy facilities as a rare bright spot in a grinding war with a bigger and better-equipped foe.
According to the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies oil and gas revenues have accounted for between 30 to 50 per cent of total federal budget revenues over the past decade, making them the most important single source of cash for the Kremlin. The Russian oil and gas sector contributes about 20 per cent of the country’s GDP on average, with wide fluctuations due to global price cyclicality and – more recently – to trade restrictions imposed by the West amid the conflict in Ukraine.
Zelensky brushed off the recommendation, instead of acquiescing to the U.S. requests, however, Ukraine doubled down on the strategy, striking a range of Russian facilities, including an April 2 attack on Russia’s third-largest refinery 800 miles from the front.
However, the Biden White House continues to urge the Ukrainians to avoid attacking Russian energy infrastructure while at the same time taking a lackadaisical approach to sanctions enforcement that allows some $9.1 billion of Russian oil to evade sanctions – including $1.3 billion that came to the United States.
The bottom line: Biden has made that clear to Ukraine not to attack critical Russian oil assets, lest pump prices in the United States creep up by a quarter a gallon in an election year, observed Keith Johnson in an article for Foreign Policy.
It should surprise no one that Biden and the Democrats have taken a similar position regarding Israeli attacks on Iranian oil refineries and infrastructure.
A senior Israeli security official said that among the options Israel is considering are cyberattacks, attacks on Iran’s oil fields and its political institutions and symbols, though the official stressed that nothing has been decided, and these may not form part of Israel’s response. The official said that Israel has previously conducted cyber-attacks on Iran’s gas stations and that this is something that is also being considered, USA Today reported.
However, Reuters reported that Iran’s unprecedented missile and drone strike on Israel is unlikely to prompt dramatic sanctions action on Iran’s oil exports from the Biden administration due to worries about boosting oil prices and angering top buyer China, said analysts.
Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, Representative Steve Scalise the No. 2 House Republican, said the administration had made it easier for Iran to sell its oil, generating revenues that were being used to “go fund terrorist activity,” reported Arshad Mohammed, Timothy Gardner and Michael Martina of Reuters.
The political and military imperative to Iran’s oil infrastructure creates a thorny problem for the Biden administration: how to deter Iranian attacks in future without raising oil prices or antagonizing Communist China, the biggest buyer of Iranian oil.
Axios reported Eurasia Group analysts see Red China, which is heavily reliant on imports from Iran, “actively” pressing Iran for restraint.
However, in what amounts to a “twofer” aimed at Iran and Communist China’s increasingly fragile economy, Republicans in Congress are considering a slate of additional potential sanctions to levy against Iran, including one bill that would take aim at Chinese banks that help Iran trade oil. It’s a precisely targeted measure: China imports about one-third of Iranian oil and accounts for virtually the entirety of Iran’s newfound export growth.
Analysts estimated that such a measure, if enacted and enforced, could jack up oil prices by close to 10 percent, or something on the order of about $8 a barrel. The Biden administration is not eager to see higher oil prices in an election year. So, instead of allowing Israel and Ukraine to take the strategically logical step of attacking energy sector targets – ones that are perhaps necessary to their ultimate victory over our shared enemies – Biden is prioritizing keeping American gas prices down over defeating Iran, Russia and Communist China.
-
Russia’s Morozovsk air base
-
Humanitarian assistance to Gaza