In early 2017, anti-Trump campaigners are talking about how Trump has banned just seven countries because his business interests lie in three others, while Pro-Trump supporters point out the seven countries come from an Obama signed bill in 2015 that required extra scrutiny for these countries.
While both sides are correct and have reasonable claims, what people are missing out is why did both Trump and Obama leave out Saudi, UAE, and Qatar! This is a good time to take some lessons on the geopolitics behind such omission under two drastically different regimes in the USA.
The real reason is one of the way the US maintains hegemony over the world is by wielding the US dollar as a weapon. And how they do that is by pairing the US dollar to oil which all of the world's countries need. Saudi, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain (let's call them "the cartel") produce a lot of oil that other powers like China, India and many others import. And we can pay for the oil only in US dollars because the cartel oil producers demand so at the behest of the US. In return, they get US military protection and a lot of other perks like non-intervention in their draconian governance and abusive dictatorships.
By this pact, the US can at will ask the cartel to reduce the production of oil thereby increasing oil prices and also the rate of the US dollar putting economies around the world into trouble. Now bring in Russia here - perhaps the only power that can militarily match the US if war happens right now. And it is also an oil & gas producing nation that takes care of energy needs of the European Union which remains the largest oil & gas consumer in the world. Being a producer itself, Russia is also not so much reliant on the cartel's oil which can be manipulated by the US.
This makes Russia the only country that can actually challenge the hegemony of the US in the world and it is doing so as it rises from Soviet ashes after two decades, under a very capable, dictatorial, nationalistic leader like Putin. Now you see why the US hates Russia so much.
Armed with this knowledge, let's analyze the current geopolitical scenario. Take a map and see the countries where serious war is going on now - Syria and Yemen. See if you can connect a line overland from Saudi to Europe without passing through Syria. You cannot. Which means an oil pipeline too cannot go through without Syria either becoming friendly to the US or falling like Iraq and other unfriendly regimes did in that region.
Similarly, see where's Yemen. It is the country that occupies the choke point of all shipping via red sea and on to Europe through Suez canal. Egypt, Libya, Sudan are other countries that had so-called ‘civil war’ before and regime changes. You will see them bordering the shipping lanes to Europe from the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.
Now, do you start seeing the big picture? The US and the cartel are desperately looking to ship oil via land into Europe. This is not so much to earn more money but to cut European dependence on Russian energy and hence to weaken Russia economically as well as reducing its strategic power over Europe.
That's why Russia got involved in the war in Syria risking a lot including the cartel controlled oil price plunge that hurt its energy exports - which are the biggest contributor to the Russian GDP. It simply could not afford Syria to go the way Iraq and other countries did to US installed regimes. It has done well there. And now to Russia’s advantage, there’s a naive president in the US who needs to be coached about their own strategic interests. He has so far said he wants peace with Russia.
May be his views will change as he gets coached and controlled by powerful special interests within the US administration and the cartel. It looks like he has already been brought on board as we see he hasn’t banned travel from the cartel counties which are responsible for many American deaths by acts of terrorism planned on their soil or carried out by their citizens.
Let’s now bring Iran into the picture. You may wonder what has Iran done until now to the world that it is being treated as evil and dangerous by the US. They just happen to be an ancient culture that’s guided by self-interests and sitting over a lot of oil that can power them to do what they want. As well as serve as a deterrent against the US petrodollar controlled world order. This is why Iran is always maligned by the US and treated with such contempt. US really gives a damn about democracy and women's rights if the country serves its interests well.
But the US has little strategic control directly over Iran. They are a powerful country with missiles that can strike Europe and Israel. If ever America decides to create chaos inside that country, it may not end peacefully for the world. So the US is very reluctant to destabilize Iran or going to war. It’s not that it is not trying, though.
The cartel works for the US here as well. They are all Sunni while Iran is Shia. They are the traditional rivals of Iran and also neighbors who can be used effectively in case of a small proxy-war by putting the blame on religious issues again. Insert Pakistan here, another terrorist exporting country that did not feature on Trump’s ban list. Again they are Sunni and used by the US as a containing force in the east of Iran!
Countries like China and India at a very high level do realize the US hegemony on energy and economy around the world. And have been trying to move away from dependence on energy sources that are controlled by the US and its various setups like the OPEC and International Atomic Energy Agency. Into energy sources that are abundantly found within their countries like Solar & Thorium. But success has been little and setbacks more - including mysterious deaths of scientists. Now you would be able to imagine why and how such setbacks happen. Let me leave you guessing over all that.