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Globetrotting journalist Pepe Escobar discusses his article “Sinking the Petrodollar in the Persian Gulf;” the increasingly divergent US and Israeli “red lines” on Iran’s nuclear program; proposed pipelines that would route oil around the Persian Gulf, marginalizing Iran’s ability to shut the Strait of Hormuz; how sanctions on Iran have lessened the US dollar’s dominance in global oil trading transactions; and the civil strife in Syria, where the opposition is no more credible than the reigning minority Assad regime.
MP3 here. (26:07)
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving Into Liquid War and Obama Does Globalistan.
An extreme traveler, Pepe’s nose for news has taken him to all parts of the globe. He was in Afghanistan and interviewed the military leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Masoud, a couple of weeks before his assassination. Two weeks before September 11, 2001, while Pepe was in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Asia Times Online published his prophetic piece, “Get Osama! Now! Or else …” Pepe was one of the first journalists to reach Kabul after the Taliban’s retreat, and more recently he has explored and reported from Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, US and China.
