Caleb Smith Block 7
The Prime Minister of Pakistan is Imran Kahn and he has come out and said that an American, Iran conflict would be a disaster on the oil prices. Kahn uses Afghanistan as an example on why the US shouldn’t get involved, because a conflict in Iran would be significantly worse. I agree with Kahn to a certain extent, but I think that the fact that America is energy dependent makes a potential conflict more likely, because America isn’t in need of Iran’s oil reserves. The consequences of America’s assassination of top general Qasem Soleimani were at the time thought by many to be irreversible. Iran made a weak attempt to save fact by firing ballistic missiles at an empty American base. What Imran Kahn and other leaders of developing countries are afraid of is that the oil price spike that would occur would seriously hurt there already fragile economies. While this wouldn’t hurt the US it could turn many developing countries against them and into China’s waiting arms. I think the most beneficial course of action would be to come to some sort of agreement. According to Kahn, Iran was willing to talk to Trump and the Americans. This makes sense, because a war would absolutely devastate their country. The way Donald Trump handles this whole situation could have a big effect on his reelection bid. The same way that previous conflicts destabilized the region this could have the same effect just magnified. In my opinion Donald Trump would prove a lot by not destroying Iran and instead using diplomacy to fix the situation. By doing this developing countries would feel more kindly toward America and be more likely to be aligned with the US. The biggest issue here is not Iran v America it is the effect a conflict between the two countries will have on the surrounding poorer countries. For that reason I believe the US should work things out verbally and only use our military if we really need too.