Decades of proxy wars and sanctions escalate: How US-Israel-Iran rivalry risks destabilising global oil markets and regional economies
Original framing: “Iran warns of 'devastating' economic fallout from any new Israeli attack” — The Hindu
This escalation mirrors the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, where the US and USSR supplied both sides, resulting in over a million deaths and long-term regional destabilization. The 2003 US invasion of Iraq, which toppled Saddam Hussein and empowered Shiite militias tied to Iran, set the stage for today’s proxy conflicts. Similarly, Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor—a precursor to its current strikes on Iranian nuclear sites—demonstrates a pattern of preemptive military action justified by nuclear fears. These historical cycles show how sanctions, invasions, and proxy wars create self-perpetuating conflict spirals, with civilian populations bearing the brunt.
This conflict is not an isolated clash of ideologies but a symptom of deeper systemic failures: the persistence of colonial-era power structures, the commodification of energy as a tool of coercion, and the erasure of local agency in favor of Great Power maneuvering.
The historical precedents—from the 1953 coup to the 2003 invasion—demonstrate how external interventions create self-sustaining cycles of violence, where each side’s retaliation is justified as 'defensive' while civilian populations pay the price. The trickster’s role here is to expose the absurdity of a system where arms manufacturers profit from war, sanctions create black markets, and climate change exacerbates the very instability that justifies military interventions. Solutions must move beyond geopolitical posturing to address the root causes: economic inequality, environmental degradation, and the lack of platforms for marginalized voices. Only by restoring these erased elements—historical context, local resistance, environmental accountability, and artistic truth-telling—can we break the cycle and imagine a future where sovereignty is not a zero-sum game but a shared project.