Iran, Mr. Bush, and Oil

Good thing we've stabilized the Middle East with our interventions in Iraq. Now, it's time for us to take care of Iran, apparently. We know Iran has resumed some kind of nuclear activity. They've told us so. And we've got the photos to prove it--even though we don't quite know what these photos prove. Are they making power or arms? Dunno.

But we don't want them playing with uranium. Period. Neither do any of our other big time playmates. So we're working on getting Iran referred to the UN Security Council for its possibly symbolic gesture of ripping the UN-placed seals off their uranium purifiers. Even Russia appears on-board. Only China is recalcitrant.

Why? Well, Iran apparently isn't run by stupid people. They have oil. Everyone wants oil. And if we keep pursuing this issue to the Security Council, Iran has threatened to jack up oil prices. And they're pretty blunt about it, referring to Iran's "cheap means" of achieving its nuclear "rights", with its President saying, "You [the west] need us more than we need you. All of you today need the Iranian nation."

The intelligent solution, it seems, would be to take the issue to the UN Security Council. But the US seems bent on achieving stupid solutions these days. So we've got Senators (even McCain, alas) sounding bellicose, even though they reserve a military solution as a "last option." McCain said, "There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option, that is a nuclear-armed Iran."

But we may not have to do the dirty work ourselves. Israel has apparently been considering the option of taking out Iran's nuclear arena by military force for years. Perhaps this explains Iran's otherwise odd anti-Semitic focus on the Holocaust, and its latest announcement of a Holocaust Conference focusing on the scientific evidence of whether or not it actually happened. Israel might well have the grounds quickly to argue the legitimacy of a preemptive strike at Iran, given the hostility being shown them right now.

So we'll continue to fight on in Iraq, spending billions of dollars and thousands of lives in a war that was declared over long ago. Next door, we could have one of our closest allies fighting a similarly unwinnable war. Would we lend a hand? Bush never backs down from a fight, particularly when it has to do with oil.

I'm not terribly comfortable with Israel these days. Don't like the way the Palestinians have been treated. Like most other bloggers, I'm loathe to talk about it (someone had a good talk about this recently--Kevin Drum, maybe?), as I will be outtalked by anyone who truly knows the area. But we really couldn't let Israel go down without a fight.

As for the oil, we really WOULDN'T let it go down (or would that be up or away?) without a fight. If I've learned nothing from reading The Oil Drum or watching that great mysterious movie Syriana, oil runs the world. Bush would like to be King. But he's not. Oil is. And he is slave to it, hoping to be master. The US will do every and any thing in its power to make sure that Iranian oil is available to us, including backing a preventive or preemptive strike by Israel--or anyone else who wants to make one. Including US.

Until tomorrow,
Liz