World War III quietly begun on Memorial Day 2012

It is my understanding that WWIII may have just begun at the very early stages with this announcement yesterday:

“The US's top military officer has warned Syria it could face armed intervention as international outrage grows over the massacre of women and children by tanks and artillery in Houla.”

Allow me to explain, Israel is a southern neighbor of Syria and also has the most to loose from a Nuclear Iran and thus the most willing to take preemptive military action. The Israeli’s would need to fly 30-50 sorties using conventional munitions to effectively delay Iran’s nuclear capabilities. If the Israelis used small nuclear bombs they could penetrate the deep facilities with approximately one half to one third the number of sorties. In either case the flight there is the most important issue.

A U.S. led attack on Syria with a convenient noble goal of humanely protecting women and children would achieve two goals. The first is regime change in one of the few remaining “Gap” countries (please see Thomas P.M. Barnett original analysis). The Second is US air superiority in Syria allowing the Israel Air force a path into Iraq where there is no air resistance and then into Iran.

Iran does have a surface to seas missile system for attacking ships, which they would like use as retaliation before the US make this system obsolete with counter measure systems to be retrofitted on U.S. ships by 2014. Thus, Iran will most likely use these missiles if it is openly attacked. The first impact would be an increase in oil to approximately $175 a barrel(according the the GAO) and an increase in food prices as fuel is critical to the to harvesting, processing, refrigeration and distribution of the majority of the global food supply.

Unknowns:
Higher oil prices benefit Russia as a major supplier and hurt China substantially. High, inflation in China could be a major threat to the stability of the existing Chinese government. The Chinese press has been siding with Iran openly for the last five months and in the last two weeks been increasingly negative of the US.

Russia historically has had a military Naval base in Syria, thus any attack against Syria without their tacit approval could be very threatening to their sense of security. An attack on Iran which is also a close neighbor and historical trading partners would be a further indignation.

Global financial crisis part two as the EU desegregates and the US debates austerity, taxes and future political leadership.

Time frame:
If the U.S. starts attacking targets in Syria expect an Attack on Iran within six-eight weeks. If this spirals out of control thereafter expect a global resource war that could last 2-5 years, in some places, initially involving Iran, Israeli, and the US and later Russia, China, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Japan as well as North and South Korea.

If the war last upward of 5 years and involves most of the countries above expect that a large part of the world population will have food security issues, which will lead to wide spread famine, higher crime rates and diseases of opportunity. Which will cause a failure of government health and security services thus leading to more violence, which will result in martial law, closed borders, capital controls, direct confiscation of weapons, food, and medial resources from hoarders and black-market enterprises that conduct transactions in gold and silver. Emergency Refuge Camps will be set up to redistribute supplies to the living and deal with the growing supply of sick and dying.