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The Coming War with Iran: It’s About the Oil, Stupid
Joe Lauria, Huffington Post
World civilization is based on oil. The world is running out of oil. The oil companies and governments are not telling the truth about how close we are to the end. Dick Cheney knew about peak oil back in 1999 when he spoke to the London Petroleum Institute as Halliburton CEO. He predicted it would come in 2010. After that it’s just a matter of years before it runs out. Whoever controls the remaining oil determines who lives and who dies.
Sixty percent of this oil is under a triangular area of the Middle East the size of Kansas. In that speech Cheney said: “The Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.”
This small Middle East triangle encompasses the northeast of Saudi Arabia, all of Iraq and the southwestern part of Iran, along with Kuwait, Qatar and the Emirates. The US controls Iraq. It has friendly governments in the other states.
Iran is the exception. The US now surrounds Iran.
Controlling an area the size of Kansas shouldn’t be a problem for the U.S. military, except that it is heavily populated and many people in the triangle don’t want the Americans there and are willing to fight.
Joe Lauria is a New York-based investigative journalist. A freelance member of the Sunday Times of London Insight team, he has also worked on investigations for the Boston Globe and Bloomberg News.
(13 April 2008)
Related from AFP: Iran – The New Motivation for US War in Iraq
Oil and the ‘New International Energy Order’ (Klare interview) (audio)
Fresh Air, National Public Radio (NPR)
With both the cost of and demand for oil rising, nations with large energy reserves are redrawing political and military alliances, and oil-rich countries like Russia and Venezuela are enjoying greater influence. Michael Klare, author of Rising Power, Shrinking Planet, calls it the “new international energy order.”
Klare is the director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies based at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. He is the author of several books, including Blood and Oil, which examines the danger of American’s dependence on foreign oil, and Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, a study of new American foreign policy. Klare is also a contributor to Harper’s, Foreign Affairs, and the Los Angeles Times.
(14 April 2008)
Jewish group attacks Swiss-Iranian gas deal
SwissInfo
The New York-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has condemned a Swiss-Iranian natural gas export deal, accusing Switzerland of financing terrorism.
The Swiss foreign ministry for its part repeated that the agreement violates neither United Nations Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme or US laws.
“As the Swiss government pursues its own narrow economic interests, it is bankrolling the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism,” declared one of the messages in the full-page advertisement the group took out in Tuesday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and several other international and Swiss newspapers.
… “The reproaches in this advertisement do not fit the facts,” said foreign ministry
… The 25-year deal with National Iranian Gas Export Company (NIGEC) covers the delivery of 5.5 billion cubic metres of gas per year to Europe through a pipeline by 2012.
It is thought to be worth between €10 billion (SFr15.9 billion) and €22 billion, depending on factors such as the price of oil.
Calmy-Rey said in Tehran that the deal was important in the long term for both parties and said it was Switzerland’s strategy to diversify its source of energy supplies
(8 April 2008)
Iraq: What Hillary and Barack Don’t Want You To Know
And John will not discuss
Ron Cooke, The Cultual Economist
Does Iraq have anything to do with the price of gasoline? Diesel fuel? Heating oil? Propane? Let’s examine what Hillary and Barack don’t want you to know and John is reluctant to reveal.
Let’s start with a statistic. At least 42 percent of the accessible conventional oil we humans need is located in one relatively small region on our planet. The Middle East. And the people who run this region do not seem to be in any hurry to send it our way. Get used to it. These people will produce their oil on their schedule. They are not going to produce their oil on our schedule. Existing drilling programs guarantee demand will exceed supply. Sometime between 2010 and 2017. Perhaps sooner.
Most of the nations that own the world’s remaining oil really don’t care what you think about the price of gasoline. Nor do they particularly care how you feel about the price of diesel, propane or heating oil fuels. They will just keep raising the price until you can’t afford to buy all they can produce.
… Both Hillary and Barack have suggested America walk away from Iraq. Bring the troops home. Give up. But – what happens next? Chaos. Civil war that leaves many thousands dead.
… Fuel shortages are highly likely if war disrupts Middle Eastern production. That means long lines at the gas pump. You can expect to pay a lot more for natural gas, gasoline, diesel, propane, kerosene and heating oil fuels. And you will pay more for electricity. Expect to be colder in the winter and hotter in the summer. The price of everything you buy will go up. And you may be unemployed.
… If you have read this far, you are probably very upset. These are unpopular concepts. But our political leaders appear to be reluctant to even discuss the consequences of our actions in the Middle East. That failure is incredibly irresponsible. We must work together. We must control the outcome. Because if we fail, we risk economic destitution and human carnage on a scale greater than we humans have ever experienced.
(30 March 2008)
Ronald Cooke (The Cultural Economist) is the author of Detensive Nation and Oil, Jihad and Destiny.
Project Update (PNAC’s success in Iraq)
William Rivers Pitt, truthout
Let’s recap.
Before delivering his State of the Union address in January of 1998, President Clinton received a letter containing one explicit demand: invade Iraq immediately and overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein.
“The only acceptable strategy,” read this letter, “is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy. We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration’s attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power.”
The letter was written by a group called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a right-wing organization originally formed by William Kristol, Republican pundit and son of neoconservative movement founder Irving Kristol, and by long-time GOP think-tanker Gary Schmitt. PNAC’s original sources of funding in 1998 included notorious far-right groups such as the Scaife Foundations, the Olin Foundation and the Bradley Foundation.
Nobody had ever heard of PNAC in 1998, and thanks to the assertions and demands written in their January letter to Clinton, nobody really took them seriously after hearing of them. Invade Iraq? Were they serious?
… It has been more than ten years now since PNAC first introduced itself by way of its letter to Clinton. Over this decade, PNAC’s ideology and foreign policy mandates became the center of gravity for America’s military and diplomatic practices and priorities. Those same PNAC members listed above were instrumental in the formulation of false arguments for an attack and invasion of Iraq, and for the execution of same.
To many, the current situation in Iraq represents a prime example of the folly and failures of George W. Bush and his administration. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. From the PNAC perspective, their presence within US government and control over US policy has been a great success. They achieved the massive increase in military spending they sought in 2000, much of which became and continues to be a multi-billion dollar payout to friends and political allies. They have their permanent bases in Iraq. And if the tea leaves are being read correctly, they might just get an attack on Iran, which represents one more step towards their goal of region-wide regime change in the Middle East.
Ten years on, the Project is doing quite nicely, thank you. Failure is only in the eye of the beholder, and if the beholder is getting everything he wants with a tidy payday to boot, “failure” is not what they are going to see. As far as PNAC is concerned, this has been a decade filled with astonishing achievements.
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: “War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know” and “The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.” His newest book, “House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America’s Ravaged Reputation,” is now available from PoliPointPress.
(14 April 2008)
Contributor William Tamblyn writes:
I agree with all of this except for Pitt’s conclusion that the neo-cons have been achieving what they set out to achieve.
As I see it, although they “achieved the massive increase in military spending they sought in 2000”, the fact is that they have WEAKENED the U.S. military. ( See, e.g., tinyurl.com/4sfape )
Whether they have established “permanent bases in Iraq” remains to be seen, but what does seem to be permanent is resistance to U.S. occupation. ( See, e.g., tinyurl.com/5lux53 )
And if they do now attack Iran, as “one more step towards their goal of region-wide regime change in the Middle East” I will be absolutely amazed if that leads to a victory for the neo-cons. Far, far more likely as I see it would be a U.S. version of the Battle of Adrianople – i.e., a battle that marks the beginning of the final collapse of the U.S. Empire.
