“Un­in­tend­ed Con­se­quences,” a phrase used most fa­mous­ly to in­di­cate how a 19-year-old’s killing of the Arch­duke Franz Fer­di­nand and his wife of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Em­pire led to the Great War, World War I (WWI).

The de­tails of the shoot­ing and the start of WWI are not im­por­tant in this col­umn to­day. The in­ci­dent is sim­ply used to draw a par­al­lel to the con­tem­po­rary. US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s vi­o­lent in­ter­ven­tion in Venezuela, cap­tur­ing of Pres­i­dent Nico­las’ Maduro and his wife, while he takes con­trol of the oil of Venezuela to serve the pur­pose of the US transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions, cut­ting off oil from Venezuela to Chi­na, crip­pling Cu­ba, with his in­ten­tion of hav­ing it crawl­ing to him, and set­ting up and car­ry­ing out the on­slaught on Iran.

That heady start, which Pres­i­dent Trump can­not stop boast­ing about, goes one step fur­ther, and in as­so­ci­a­tion with his war-mon­ger­ing mate in Is­rael, Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu, whose in­tent is to sub­ju­gate Iran, as­sas­si­nates the Spir­i­tu­al Leader of the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic, bombs the coun­try seem­ing­ly in­to sub­mis­sion, and is in the process of do­ing same to Lebanon while steal­ing part of that coun­try’s sov­er­eign state.

How­ev­er, the Un­in­tend­ed Con­se­quences are turn­ing out to be a long war of re­tal­ia­to­ry ac­tion by a de­ter­mined and re­silient Iran, as dis­tinct from the Venezue­lan ca­per.

The un­in­tend­ed con­se­quences, a pro­longed war, notwith­stand­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s claim that there is noth­ing left in Iran to bomb; nonethe­less, he con­tin­ues to threat­en to bomb Iran out of ex­is­tence, and lays faith in a “peace deal” in which Iran is not rep­re­sent­ed and says it has no in­ter­est in, un­less the US com­mits to Teheran’s pro­pos­als to end the war, in­clud­ing be­ing re­spon­si­ble for re­con­struc­tion of bombed parts of Iran. An­oth­er set of Un­in­tend­ed Con­se­quences.

Com­ing from the US, the re­ports are that fight­ing the war in Iran is cost­ing the Amer­i­can tax­pay­er US$1 bil­lion for every day the war con­tin­ues – an­oth­er un­in­tend­ed con­se­quence. Then there is the re­al­i­ty of the spread­ing eco­nom­ic im­pact of the war around the globe, as Iran con­tin­ues its as­sault on US bases lo­cat­ed in the Arab world and so too, oil in­stal­la­tions - an­oth­er set of Un­in­tend­ed Con­se­quences.

Iran’s in­vok­ing of a de­ci­sion that on­ly the car­goes of oil of friend­ly coun­tries will be al­lowed through the Strait of Hor­muz, said to be a wa­ter­way through which ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 per cent of the ship­ments of oil will nor­mal­ly pass on the way to the mar­kets of the world – an­oth­er Un­in­tend­ed Con­se­quence.

With­in the first few days of the war against Iran, with the price of oil sky­rock­et­ing, Pres­i­dent Trump told the world in de­fence of the war start­ed with­out a sol­id ba­sis for do­ing so, and be­ing il­le­gal­ly car­ried out against the laws of his coun­try, “it is a small price to pay” for the bomb­ing of Iran, which he deems to be the great­est of sup­port­ers of world ter­ror­ism; mean­while, its part­ner in crime, Is­rael, bombs Lebanon, said to ac­com­mo­date the “ter­ror” groups of Hezbol­lah and the Houthis, and be­gins an­oth­er il­le­gal oc­cu­pa­tion (con­fis­ca­tion) of Lebanon’s sov­er­eign ter­ri­to­ry – the his­to­ry be­ing that Is­rael nev­er re­turns ter­ri­to­ry it has il­le­gal­ly cap­tured.

To add his quo­ta of men­ace to the sit­u­a­tion, the bel­liger­ent US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, while de­tail­ing the Amer­i­can ob­jec­tives for the war, as the de­struc­tion of Iran’s air force and navy, of Iran’s stock­pile of weapons, and the fac­to­ries which fab­ri­cate the weapons, he how­ev­er ne­glects to in­clude in the ob­jec­tives, the ma­jor ra­tio­nale for the in­va­sion, i.e., to de­stroy Iran’s nu­clear ca­pac­i­ty, said to have been months away from be­ing able to fab­ri­cate nu­clear weapons - mem­o­ries of Iraq’s “weapons of mass de­struc­tion” that were sup­posed to be buried un­der the desert, which were nev­er found, but for which an es­ti­mat­ed 200,000-plus (Brown Uni­ver­si­ty) Iraqi civil­ians were mur­dered.

But notwith­stand­ing all of that, what I con­sid­er to be the most dra­mat­ic and po­ten­tial­ly ex­plo­sive Un­in­tend­ed Con­se­quence has been the world­wide, mas­sive protes­ta­tions against the un­called-for and il­le­gal war against Iran, and Lebanon – Hezbol­lah and Houthis, Ne­tanyahu’s slaugh­ter of in­no­cent hu­man be­ings, the mass de­struc­tion of homes, in­fra­struc­ture, in­clud­ing hos­pi­tals, schools.

Of great Un­in­tend­ed Con­se­quence is the re­fusal of Amer­i­ca’s NA­TO al­lies to join it in its il­le­gal war, and now the de­mand by Pres­i­dent Trump for Eu­rope to as­sist with hav­ing the Strait of Hor­muz open to ship­ments of oil, to avoid ris­ing in­fla­tion around the world.

In the present, and notwith­stand­ing Amer­i­ca’s pres­i­den­tial boast of near­ly ar­riv­ing at his ob­jec­tives, the ex­pect­ed/pro­ject­ed swift in and out, as in Venezuela, the US pro­jec­tions for be­ing in and out of Iran in a jiffy, full of con­quests, with Is­rael’s own hope of dec­i­mat­ing Iran’s nu­clear ca­pa­bil­i­ty in­to obliv­ion, are ob­jec­tives not achieved, “and the war goes on … what is it good for? Ab­solute­ly noth­ing…!” An­oth­er se­ries of Un­in­tend­ed Con­se­quences which is push­ing world civil­i­sa­tion to a cat­a­stro­phe of great pro­por­tions.

“War, what is it good for, ab­solute­ly noth­ing…” Ed­win Starr’s 1970 Mo­town Hit, it re­minds of that pe­ri­od when the fight for lib­er­a­tion in var­i­ous parts of the world took place.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er – free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and News Di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and St Au­gus­tine – In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions