Amid the war-like situation between Iran and Israel; Elon Reeve Musk, the Founder-CEO of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla, Inc., met Amir Saeid Iravani, the Envoy of the Islamic Republic to the UN, on November 11, 2024! Reports suggest that Musk, a close aide of US President-elect Donald John Trump, met the Iranian envoy mainly to defuse tensions in West Asia. According to political analysts, the meeting is quite significant, keeping in mind that the tech billionaire is all set to join the incoming Trump Administration in order to “dismantle government bureaucracy“!

Tehran confirmed that the hour-long meeting held at a confidential location ended on a positive note. A senior official of the Iranian Foreign Ministry told the New York Times that Iravani requested Musk to explore potential business opportunities in the West Asian nation and push for US sanctions exemptions. However, the concerned authorities in Washington DC refused to comment on the meeting. “We do not comment on reports of private meetings that did or did not occur,” stressed Steven Cheung, the Communications Director of Trump. Iran’s mission to the UN, too, refrained from commenting on the meeting.

During his campaign, Trump repeatedly assured his countrymen that he would try his best to end the Russia-Ukraine War and to restore peace in West Asia, if he entered the White House for a second term. The US media have claimed that Musk’s meeting with the Iranian envoy is a step towards the implementation of that electoral promise. However, some leaders of the Republican Party are still against normalising ties with Iran. During his first term as President, Trump pursued a policy of putting Tehran under pressure by imposing economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic. A section of analysts believes that the President-elect has sent a positive message to Iran through Musk, this time! He might change his strategy, keeping in mind the changing situation in West Asia. The development has also hinted that Trump is serious about diplomacy with Iran and not choosing the more hawkish approach favoured by many conservatives in his Republican Party, as well as Israel.

It may be noted that Musk openly backed Trump during the latter’s campaign for the 2024 US Presidential Elections and also jokingly styled himself as First Buddy of the President-elect on social media. After winning the elections, Trump announced that Musk would co-lead a new Department of Government Efficiency with Vivek Ramaswamy, making it clear that the business tycoon secured his place in his (administrative) orbit.

Meanwhile, sources close to the Republican Party have claimed that the Tesla CEO’s widening influence on Trump’s decision-making process has started causing some discontent within the President-elect’s inner circle. “He’s behaving as if he’s a co-president and making sure everyone knows it,” an insider told NBC News. Another source told Politico that Musk was “getting a little big for his britches“.

Stop Bullying The World: We Have To Start Fresh
(Schiller Institute) In a November 8, 2024 interview, Colonel (Retired) Douglas Macgregor spoke to the kind of profound re-thinking of policy needed in the aftermath of the US Presidential Elections. “People don’t think these things through,” Macgregor exclaimed, adding: “We’ve got to give up the whole idea of sanctioning, bullying and threatening. We’ve got to get out a clean sheet of paper and start from scratch.” Macgregor, who served briefly as a Senior Adviser to the Secretary of Defence during Trump’s first term in office, pointed to “the financial crisis looming over the horizon” as a crisis that may help the US to do just that.

Macgregor is right. But what shall we write on that blank page? What is the content of the policy needed to replace the sanctioning, bullying and threatening, a policy that will eliminate forever the danger of a thermonuclear war with Russia and/or China, by removing the cause of the policies creating that danger?

In her weekly webcast, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of Schiller Institute, recently underscored that “the challenge of our time” was for the US and Europe to cooperate with the BRICS countries in the development of the Global South. She explained that “the world stage has changed dramatically since Trump left the White House four years ago, and now the existence of a Global Majority in the form of the BRICS is a new strategic reality, which I think no President of the United States, nor the Head of Government of any country can ignore.“

This Global Majority speaks for close to five billion people, and they are committed to ending the era of colonialism, neo-colonialism and Wall Street, and City of London looting of their economies and populations. The US must – and can – have a positive relationship to that group of countries, which have stated explicitly that they are not a bloc, and that they are open to cooperating with the nations of Europe and even NATO.

However, the basis of such a collaboration has to be joint efforts around great infrastructure development projects, such as the one at Peru’s Chancay mega-port, which was officially inaugurated on November 14, 2024 by visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping and Peruvian President Dina Boluarte. The building of that port and the related bi-oceanic high-speed rail corridor, linking Peru’s Pacific coast with Brazil’s Atlantic ports, are exactly the sort of project that the US companies should be participating in, side by side with China, exporting high-tech capital goods and other products and helping to advance the living standard and skill level of the local population.

The creation of those kinds of productive jobs in Mexico and Central America, or in Sub-Saharan Africa with similar projects, is also the only way to stop the flow of illegal migrants and deadly drugs – not “sanctioning, bullying and threatening“… or worse.

The only ones who will lose from this kind of American win-win cooperation with China, Russia and the Global Majority, are the bloated speculative interests of the City of London and Wall Street, and the drug-trafficking and Military Financial Complex that they run. They are the ones that have brought the planet to the edge of a total financial breakdown and to the very brink of nuclear war.

The incoming Trump Administration has got a historic opportunity. Trump “could start with a completely clean plate and he could really try to make good on his promise to end the wars, to for sure not begin new ones,” stated Zepp-LaRouche.

She insisted: “If Trump would do that, as I have already said in his first term – he could become one of the great Presidents of the United States. If he goes in the other direction, in the realm of confrontation to try to ‘Make America Great Again’ at the expense of the rise of China or other countries, I see the world will unfortunately go in a terrible direction.“

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das