The great Bilderberg secret of 2019 had to do with why, suddenly, the Trump administration has decided that it wants to talk to Iran "with no preconditions."
It all has to do with the Strait of Hormuz. Blocking the Strait could cut off oil and gas from Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Iran 20% of the world's oil. There has been some debate on whether this could occur whether the US Fifth Fleet, which is stationed nearby, could stop Tehran doing this and if Iran, which has anti-ship missiles on its territory along the northern border of the Persian Gulf, would go that far.
An American source said a series of studies hit President Trump's desk and caused panic in Washington. These showed that in the case of the Strait of Hormuz being shut down, whatever the reason, Iran has the power to hammer the world financial system, by causing global trade in derivatives to be blown apart.
The Bank for International Settlements said last year that the "notional amount outstanding for derivatives contracts" was $542 trillion, although the gross market value was put at just $12.7 trillion. Others suggest it is $1.2 quadrillion or more.
Tehran has not voiced this "nuclear option" openly. And yet General Qasem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps' Quds Force and a Pentagon bà ªte noire, evoked it in internal Iranian discussions. The information was duly circulated to France, Britain and Germany, the EU-3 members of the Iran nuclear deal (or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), also causing a panic.
Oil derivative specialists know well that if the flow of energy in the Gulf is blocked it could lead to the price of oil reaching $200 a barrel, or much higher over an extended period. Crashing the derivatives market would create an unprecedented global depression. Trump's former Goldman Sachs Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin should know as much.
And Trump himself seems to have given the game away. He's now on the record essentially saying that Iran has no strategic value to the US. According to the American source: "He really wants a face-saving way to get out of the problem his advisers Bolton and Pompeo got him into. Washington now needs a face-saving way out. Iran is not asking for meetings. The US is."
And that brings us to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's long, non-scheduled stop in Switzerland, on the Bilderberg's fringes, just because he's a "big cheese and chocolate fan," in his own words.
Yet any well-informed cuckoo clock would register he badly needed to assuage the fears of the trans-Atlantic elites, apart from his behind-closed-doors meetings with the Swiss, who are representing Iran in communications with Washington. After weeks of ominous threats to Iran, the US said "no preconditions" would be set on talks with Tehran, and this was issued from Swiss soil.
China Draws Its Lines In The SandBilderberg could not escape discussing China. Geo-poetic justice rules that virtually at the same time, China was delivering a powerful message to East and West at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
The Shangri-La dialogue is Asia's top annual security forum, and unlike Bilderberg, held like clockwork at the same hotel in Singapore's Orchard Road. As much as Bilderberg, Shangri-La discusses "relevant security issues."
A case can be made that Bilderberg frames the discussions as in the recent cover story of a French weekly, owned by a Macron-friendly oligarch, titled "When Europe Ruled the World." Shangri-La instead discusses the near future when China may be actually ruling the world.
Beijing sent a top-of-the-line delegation to this year's forum, led by Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe. And on Sunday, General Wei laid down China's unmistakable red lines; a stern warning to "external forces" dreaming of independence for Taiwan, and the "legitimate right" for Beijing to expand man-made islands in the South China Sea.
By then everyone had forgotten what Acting US Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan had said the day before, accusing Huawei to be too close to Beijing and posing a security risk to the "international community."
General Wei also found time to rip Shanahan to shreds. "Huawei is a private company, not a military company... Just because the head of Huawei used to serve in the army, does not mean his company is a part of the military. That doesn't make sense."
Shangri-La is at least transparent. As for Bilderberg, there won't be any leaks on what the Masters of the Universe told Western elites about the profitability of pursuing the war on terror; the drive toward total digitalization of cash; total rule of genetically modified organisms; and how climate change will be weaponized.
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