Wampum

I'm still but a child. Thank you EBW for connecting the dots.

I do not know much about oil. Unfortunately, after reading your piece I still do not. You might want to spell out the meaning of "light sweet crude oil" for your argument. Frankly, you left out far too many points for the uninitiated to follow your argument.

Light sweet crude is defined in the NYNEX text I put in just for people who don't know why it is important, or what it actually is.

As for Juan's readers (wow, 887 as of mid-day, 1,203 at 4:30pm) who haven't been dipping into my "Return of the ... One True King" series, 20 parts now, with one I forgot to move from draft to publish, or my "Is Pakistan?" series, I don't really write for you. I didn't expect Cole to link, I just sent him a note that Klare's piece was ... junk or something. I hoped that in the future he'd give a sentance or two of caveats. There are half-a-dozen people who do read my stuff and that's who I write for.

You can google now, or you can google later. At some point, assuming both that the regime does attack Iran, and that some readers are interested in the facts and non-facts, you'll have to do the work.

888, Juan did link to you. I am not sure I followed the whole argument but it seems plausible on its face. However, the politics behind any of our actions in that area are so Byzantine that I am not sure that any writer could touch all the bases without churning out a multivolume series.
On MEK, while not an opposition group maybe, they also are not along the lines of the Heaven's Gate folks either, so cult is not such a good term either.

Look, you _have_ to have a cogent narrative in 1,000 words or you're just letting someone else run the boards.

The Camp Ashraf population are in US custody. They could be swapped for real al Quida cadres the Iranians have bagged, and they are a cult.

From your disappointment with Klare, I take it you have never read him before. The flaws you note are typical of his approach. Sadly, he s regularly featured in Le Monde Diplomatique, and thus has a European readership, as well as his American audience.
Since I accessed your commnets through Juan's link, I am not familiar with your own analyses. If you, or your readers, have not looked at it, I would recommend the paper dated March 20, 2005 by Anthony Cordesman "The Changing Balance of US and Global Dependence on Middle East Energy Exports" available on the website of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. On page 36, he makes what I believe is the same point that you are arguing, although from a different, but complementary, perspective.

In an Foreign Affairs article entitled 'Securing the Gulf', written in the heady days just after Baghdad fell in 2003, Kenneth Pollock who was the Middle East person in Clinton's National Security Council had this to say. "America's primary interest in the Persian Gulf lies in ensuring the free and stable flow of oil from the region to the world at large." In particular, America has a "critical interest in seeing that Persian Gulf oil continues to flow copiously and relatively cheaply." This is because the global economy "rests on a foundation of inexpensive, plentiful oil, and if that foundation were removed, the global economy would collapse." He adds "the fact that the U.S. does not import most of its oil from the Persian Gulf is irrelevant".

Pollack also mentions that "the U.S. is not simply concerned with keeping oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf; it also has an interest in preventing any potentially hostile state from gaining control over the region and its resources". Finally, the geographical position of the region is significant: "[America] has an interest in maintaining military access to the Persian Gulf because of the region's geostrategically critical location ... If the U.S. were denied access to the Persian Gulf, its ability to influence events in many other key regions of the world would be greatly diminished."

Simple translation: The Persian Gulf is very important globally, especially for its oil. Ergo, the U.S. must be able to exert decisive influence (hegemony) over this region. This is independent of how much oil it happens to import from the Middle East. If it's globally important, and the Gulf region is due to its oil, the U.S. believes it must be in control.

It seems to me that these are the geopolitical considerations that Klare is alluding to in his article. A nuclear armed Iran could greatly diminish U.S. hegemony over the Persian Gulf and that is why the U.S. is so apprehensive about such a potential development. Moreover, the Bush administration may well believe that regime change in Iran could help extend U.S. hegemony.

Ken,

Its funny I never noticed that. I've been reading the Diplo since ... Tet, but I never read its coverage of the US, other than the infrequent piece on Indians.

I'll go read Cordesman. Thx.

Patrick,

For Klare's premise to be rational, some rational actor wants to not sell oil and gas for money, like not to India because the rational actor doesn't like Bollywood films, as tastes really do vary, or like not to China because the rational actor is really, really ticked about noodles or muslim seperatists in the Gobi, or ...

For Klare's premise to be rational, the regimes in Iran, Iraq, Saudi, the GCC, mostly have to be replaced by stable governments indifferent to foreign exchange, and much wierder than any now present, outside of Washington.

The possibility of future irrational actors is a fairly poor rational for becoming a present irrational actor.

Posit Iran with Israel's (or Pakistan's or India's) inventory of fission devices. Now make (or have Klare make) the case that that hypothetical alone is the single most controlling element on West Asian energy price and availability. Sufficient to keep India or China energy poor.

Granted, many happy beltway people in early 2003 could have thought that Saddam might have (if inflated) eventually attempted to rock the "inexpensive, plentiful oil" foundation. A lot of people were smoking a lot of triumphalist dope at that point in time, and probably haven't been paying much attention to the real workproduct of the WMD inspection, or the data on conventional weapons and material readiness of the Iraqi army and air force circa 2002.

I appreciate your trying to read Klare charitably, but if we're on the edge of a third Bush/Blair war in West Asia, charity may not be the best first choice. What the Bush regime belives is just that. Belief.

Thanks also for your comment!

I'm not entirely sure what Klare's premise may be. I agree it doesn't seem plausible that the desire to implant US oil companies into Iran should provide a major impetus for attacking the country.

However, given the Carter Doctrine and the reasoning of informed insiders like Ken Pollack, it seems clear that long term geopolitical considerations do provide an appropriate backdrop with which to view the mounting hostility towards Iran. Look at the long standing, massive presence of the US military in the Gulf. This is the visible manifestation of US hegemony in this region. Its purpose is to maintain decisive US influence in a region that is considered strategically important both for its resources and its location. (BTW, the cost of maintaining such a force is well beyond the value of the oil the US imports from the region.)

For the US, the geopolitical imperative is to prevent Iran from becoming a greater regional power since that would come at the expense of its own power and influence. Any US administration would pursue this objective (although not necessarily by attacking. And the rise of Iran may in fact be inevitable.)

If we posit a nuclear-armed Iran, then an attack on that country looks improbable. (In retaliation, the whole US fleet in the Persian Gulf could be instantly liquidated.) Iran could not be intimidated easily. The other countries of the region could start to pay more attention to Iranian preferences and distance themselves from the US, which may end up being pushed out of the region.

Pollack himself does not believe that attacking Iran is a good idea. If Iran does become nuclear armed, he advocates reinforcing US alliances with the Gulf monarchies. However, the one thing they all fear is a collapse of US power in this region.

Geopolitical considerations made when oil was trading under $30/br do not appear to have had any utility predicting, or preventing, prices now well over $50/br.

Any US administration would pursue this objective???

No. There are lots of things the US has no interest in, and how Europe, West Asia, and East Asia play stickball or football or price and allocate energy are three of them. Just because a lot of people say "we must control the Gulf", that doesn't make the assertion actually true, just widely believed.

Eric,

Didn't a lot people say that Saddam Hussein was working with Al Qaeda and threatening the US with Nuclear weapons and WMD? False beliefs still can have some very serious consequences

Kevin,

I'm aware of that. Its why I write, at least about Iran, enrichment, and related issues. I could be just tending to my garden instead.

Eric

For readers unable to understand this coded discourse but wishing, if not an initiation into it, then a better understanding of your argument, might you please suggest any number of your articles?

Lauren,

If you ask your question, I can try and answer it.

To back up a bit, in the original article, part of what he is say is that all oil is not the same. The oil largely used in the US has a sulfur weight of less than 0.42 API. The oil Iran sells has a sulfur weight content over 1.00.

Its not my area of engineering, but I'd guess that the refineries that supply the US with its gasoline and heating oil would either be less efficient with the Iranian oil, or would have to retool to use it.

However, I'd say the US does not only act on its own oil needs. This US administration views oil as the essential commodity in the world, which it has been since basically the time the British fleet converted from coal to oil. The US would also want to control oil reserves in order to be able to deny oil to anyone else it thinks worthy of the treatment.

Remember, in its basic strategy documents, this US administration has said that one of its primary goals is to deny any other country or grouping of countries from being able to obtain the power to challenge the US militarily or economically. I feel the US is looking to a post peak-oil world and is attempting to grab as much of this resource as it can. Both to protect its own military and economy, but also to threaten others.

Remember, the US was part of the coalition that defeated both Germany and Japan by cutting off their oil supplies. In the end, the Tiger tanks didn't have any fuel, and the Japaneese navy's mighty battleships were making one-way suicide attacks because of the lack of fuel.

But sometimes I think its simpler than that. I think you need to look a little closer to the Bush administration. I think sometimes its more on the level of making sure its friends make money. So its more on the Haliburton, Bechtel level. And lots of Republicans invested in US defence stocks. I get the impression just stealing money for its immediate friends is more the modus operanti for this crew.

Lauren,
Here's a bit of the code: Eric asks us to keep these numbers in mind "44% from the Western Hemisphere outside the US (Canada, Mexico, Venezuala), 20% from the Middle East (14% from Saudi), 14% from Africa (Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, Algeria), and 8% from Europe (UK, Norway, Russia)." I believe these percentages represent the regional distribution of US oil imports. I think the point is that only 20% comes from the Middle East and most of that from S.A. (NB, this fraction (20%) is projected to rise substantially over the long term.)

My guess is that virtually no oil imported to the US comes from Iran. Moreover, I believe that engineer is right when he mentions that Iranian oil has a higher sulfer content (and lower specific gravity?) than would be suitable for US refineries.

So on the face of it, Klare's contention that energy security is a factor in current US hostility to Iran seems wrong. However, if one looks at the broader geopolitical context, he is probably right. In this I cited Kenneth Pollack because he is a mainstream figure who has worked at the highest levels within the US foreign policy community. He has been directly concerned with Middle East policy and has written candidly about US interests. (I am not endorsing his positions. Rather I take them as representative of the thinking of the US foreign policy elite.) Pollack tells us in no uncertain terms that it is irrelevant to US interests how much oil it actually imports from the Middle East; no matter, the US must 'secure the Gulf'.

As I have tried to point out, (long standing) US policy has been to prevent the rise of a regional hegemon in this area of the world which is widely viewed as strategically significant precisely because of its resources and its location. A nuclear armed Iran is viewed as a serious threat to US hegemony in the region. That is what they are really worried about.

I pointed out the sulfer issue in the original post, which means that efficiency will be greater for western hemisphere streams.

Since "Iranian nukes" is a constant theme, see the South Asian Times piece from April 6th I've linked to in a post on Pakistan momentarily at the top of the current page (the post you are reading was written four days ago).

Time to close this thread. Klare never showed up, and to be fair, I don't read the journals he's published in, so fair's fair.