Europe may be the one left paying the price for Trump’s war

In 1975, the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was on a ski holiday in Switzerland when American journalist Mike Wallace of CBS’s 60 Minutes seized the opportunity to fly to Europe to interview him. By that point, the United States and other western countries were two years on from an economically devastating oil embargo enforced by Arab countries, which had refused to sell oil to the US in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur war after America sided with Israel.

Almost instantly, the price of oil had risen from $3 a barrel to nearly $12 all over the world. The economic effects were crippling, and fuel rations were put in place in some parts of the US. Inflation and unemployment were both high. By the time the shah sat down for his 60 Minutes interview, the embargo enforced by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries had been lifted, but countries like Iran insisted on keeping the price of oil high – they argued that the West had been exploiting the Middle East for cheap oil for decades.

“Well, it’s new to you,” the shah told the American TV presenter. “‘How could these strange people – and it’s not our case – living on sand, have such money?’ It’s maybe a little shock, at the beginning. But you are going to get used to it.”

And the world did. Every decade since has offered at least one example of a link between Middle East conflicts and spikes in oil prices and global supply disruptions – when the shah was overthrown in the Iranian revolution in 1979, in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, in 2011 when Iran was threatened with sanctions for its nuclear programme, and in today’s US/Israel war on Iran.

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Which brings us to last night, when Simon Harris took to his feet in the Dáil chamber to announce that, as expected, the Irish Government is going to have to bring forward some sort of measure next week to help the public cope with a surge in oil and fuel prices in the wake of the US/Israel war on Iran.

“I want to confirm to this house that we are now finalising what we believe to be an appropriate intervention, for the areas in which is there is most acute pressure and challenge,” the Tánaiste said, adding that it is likely to be brought to next week’s Cabinet meeting.

As my colleague Marie O’Halloran reports, he was speaking after Sinn Féin introduced emergency legislation to cut excise on oil and fuel for six months and a private members’ debate on the issue. But the pressure has been mounting for as long as this three-week war has been raging, with the public conditioned to expect some form of relief after the precedent set when the Government offered energy credits in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Technically, Europe may be the one left paying the price for the US president’s bullish war – as this continent is far more reliant on exports from the Middle East than the United States is. But even with US’s ability to rely on oil from Canada and Mexico, and its own – albeit depleted – reserves, the past two weeks have shown that no country can entirely inoculate itself from the global shock of a supply crisis of Middle Eastern oil. Whether or not this will concentrate minds in Washington to bring the war to an end, or force European Nato members to consider the unpalatable request from Trump to help police the Strait of Hormuz, we will have to wait and see.

The UK government has already reportedly taken legal advice on what, if anything, it can do to join the US operation to attempt to open the Middle Eastern choke point for 20 per cent of the world’s oil. And in our World section today, we have an interesting piece explaining how the resignation of a US counterterrorism chief has fractured Trump’s once loyal Maga base – with many turning against him over the war. In her analysis, Michael Jansen asks – three weeks in – who is actually winning this war?

Meanwhile, Jack Power reports from Brussels in advance of a meeting of the EU’s 27 leaders today, which will be dominated by the issue of soaring energy prices. He explains how “steep energy costs” will “put pressure on Europe’s industrial base, already under strain.”

For now, we can expect some sort of short-term measure from our own Government. Harris said he believed that any relief should be “for a short period of time,” to allow assistance be applied quickly and “to provide the Government with the time and space to adapt our response, should that be required”. Minister for Energy Darragh O’Brien said “we will bring forward supports next week for households and for businesses in a targeted, structured and sustainable way”.

Back at the sharp end of the conflict, our front page story today is a dispatch from Sally Hayden in southern Lebanon, where Israeli strikes on bridges threaten to cut off parts of the region from the rest of the country. She writes about how some have chosen to stay in this part of the country, where strikes are most severe, because they believe that no part of Lebanon is truly safe at the moment. This feeling, Hayden writes, has been exacerbated by the latest wave of air strikes on central Beirut.

Gerry Adams

Back to London now, where Mark Hennessy and Ellen O’Riordan are continuing their coverage of the Gerry Adams civil trial. Adams, the former Sinn Féin leader, repeatedly denied yesterday having known anything about the IRA’s London Docklands bombing. According to Adams, he was “stunned” by the attack – which he told the court had “brought an end to the IRA ceasefire and potentially the end to a peace strategy, which I and others worked at for 30 years or more.” Two people were killed in the attack, and many others injured.

In his analysis of Wednesday’s events in court, Adams’s second day of evidence, Hennessy writes about the mechanics of this fascinating case – which may well rest on a judge deciding if the claims were made outside of the statute of limitations for personal injuries cases. Adams’s defence has also tried to argue that there is an element of abuse of process, that the case is not really about personal damages but, according to Adams’s legal team, “to see him face a public inquiry for his role during The Troubles.”

Hennessy explains that the “key” to the judgment in this case “could be – with emphasis on the could – whether the judge can, or does, make any distinction between the issue of Adams’s alleged IRA membership and his equally alleged involvement in the bombings.”

Best Reads

A rare midterm, rather than end of term, award from Miriam Lord – who is declaring Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan “best minister in a supporting role” after he was able to step in as an able understudy for the Taoiseach – who was being whisked from Washington to an EU meeting.

Newton Emerson has a fascinating column about attempts to try to count the financial cost of Northern Ireland’s divided society – and a consideration of whether or not that cost, when shown to the public, might be one that some feel is worth paying.

And Seanín Graham has a really interesting piece from inside Queen’s University Belfast, where a referendum on reintroducing bilingual signs is being held.

We have a new episode of Inside Politics, where Pat Leahy takes us inside the Oval Office meeting between the Taoiseach and the US president.