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I
don't believe that the pending war in Iran has anything to do
with nuclear energy or nuclear weapons.
Sometimes US foreign policy is conducted using hidden messages
(in order to make sure US citizens have no idea what's going
on) but I believe Iran knows what the message is: the United
States will rain down death and destruction on Iran (just as
we did in Iraq) if Iran moves ahead aggressively with its
effort to open an oil exchange where contracts will be paid
for in euros rather than dollars.
On the other hand, Iran is telling the US that if you make war
on us, we might choose to sell our oil only for euros; dollars
will no longer be accepted.
So what we have here is a game of chicken.
If the US and/or Israel goes ahead and bombs Iran under the
pretext of stopping their atomic energy program, Iran might
refuse to sell its oil for dollars. This probably would
precipitate a world wide economic recession with the US
economy being among the primary losers. That might be an
understatement. Of course we have our fleet now in the
gulf to place an embargo on Iranian oil if they were to do
that, but how do we know that Venezuela would not follow
Iran's lead?
Of course, Iran doesn't want to be bombed back to the Stone
Age as we have now done to Iraq, and its leaders are not much
interested in regime change, an activity in which the US has
some expertise and a
history of success.
This would not be the first time that the US government set
out to overthrow the Iranian government. The US was successful
in overthrowing Iran's legitimate and democratically elected
prime minister, Dr.
Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, replacing his government with
a repressive puppet regime that was favorable to British and
US interests. The reason we took it upon ourselves to destroy
their emerging democracy in 1953 was that Mossadegh had
decided to nationalize the oil industry rather than continue
to allow what was then Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (today known
as British Petroleum) to rape the country
of its oil resources. In any event, the dictator Mohammad Reza
Shah Pahlavi (The Shah of Iran), who we put into power to
protect our source of cheap oil, was eventually overthrown by
Islamic radicals, who were able to gain public support due to
the Shah's excessive repression. It's their successors who we are dealing with
today. A great many Iranian citizens probably remember or know
what we did to them and their country in 1953 when we killed
their chance to live in a democracy.
I suppose it's sort of a stalemate at this point. Until the US
or Iran backs off or escalates, we are held in suspense. If it
comes to war, I don't see how either side can win. If Bush
really believes the US is as powerful and invulnerable as
his rhetoric implies and he acts on his illusions, it will be
very interesting to watch.
I will leave it to other experts to explain why trading oil
for Euros would be so devastating to the US economy. The truth
is we have no moral right to the exclusive monopoly on how oil
transactions are executed, just as we have no legal or moral
claim on the oil that lies beneath the sands of the Middle
East.
Our vulnerability is due to our own greed, negligence, and
malfeasance, which is, in turn, reflected in the people we elect
to public office, or promote to the upper echelons of many of our corporations.
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