Iraq, Iran, And Uncle Sam. Ronald Lairchild (November 9th, 2005)

Over the past fifty years few countries have seen as much mutual animosity as Iran and The United States of America. People in Iran have been having political dealings with each other since the late 1800s, but in the early 2000s rarely a month goes by without tension either increasing or decreasing between the two countries. The first of many major “sore spots” came when Iran felt the effects of something called Operation Ajax, which the Shah of Iran (a Shah is a type of Persian monarch) reinstalled by Great Britain and the U.S (using its CIA). After the return of the Shah Iran's stab at democracy quickly ended in a ruthless dictatorship complete with draconic secret police. The Shah consolidated his power just in time to see petroliumand gasoline become truly cemented in the world’s economy thans to the 1950s econimc boom.

During the 1950s and the 1970s Iran began to “westernize”, which menat that the ancient traditions (and many of the no-so-ancient tradition) of the area were starting to disapear, replaced by those of countries like the United Kingdom, the U.S., and Canada. The Shah was no friend of anyone who disliked his rule, and among these were hardline muslim fundimentalists, and in 1979 the Shah was deposed and replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeni, who promptly began issuing vicious rhetoric against the United States. Since this time there have been many U.S. sanctions, changes in leadership, and since 1979 the wounds have been opened and reopened over subjects like nukes, oil, and Isrial.

On the other side of the Atlantic the United States is as powerful as ever and the dawning of the 21st Century has seen some aggressive moves. With the invasion of Iraq in 2003 deposed a very anti-American leader, and the political tumblers have once began to turn at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. At the same time Iran has again been flirting with making its own nuclear weapons, which in turn makes the U.S. (and the western nations in general) very nervious.

Why do I mention all of this? In a word… war. Modern wars are very complex things, taking many thousands of people and many billions of dollars, but they can start for the most simple of reasons. Three of the basics are food, living space, and pride. While it is hard to suggest that a continent filled with obese people hardly need invade a place like Iran because it is starving, soon Uncle Sam’s gas tank may see a famine in its future. With 10% of the worlds proven oil reserves sitting benieth the Iranian soil there will be little the Iranian people can do to keep themselves out of the spotlight and out of the line of sight of western gunboat politics. It also means that Iran must be taken seriously, and that everything it does and says must be watched closely by anyone who depends on petrolium products for their livelyhood, and as the price of sweet crude rises so does the liklyhood of a hostile takeover.

Peak Oil, also known as the Hubbert Theory, this is the tipping point at which it becomes unprofitable to pump oil out of the ground. In this case, if oil were apples, the only apples left would be on the very top of the tree and getting them down would represent risking one’s neck. At this point the west faces a sobering choice; find another fuel to keep themselves running or “shake the tree”. Few realize that right now the military bodies of the western nations are focusing their energies toward training to win an all out war in the caries landscapes of places like Iran. The U.S. uses countries like its “new ally” Iraq to launch unmanned spy flights into Iran’s airspace looking for nuclear weapons facilities.

The fact is that whoever controls the Middle East controls the majority of the world’s oil supply, and whoever controls the world’s oil supply could begin to pull the strings that influence rest of the world. In order to begin to “move in” one would need to legitimize a nation’s presence (say to search for “Weapons of Mass Destruction”) and then slowly install a new, more friendly (and more “western”) government who might in turn act as a friendly base of operations for future initiatives. With no one inside the CIA truly taking responsibility for the curious lack of actual Weapons of Mass Destruction, the entire “Iraq Weapons Crisis” has become very muddy. This adds a large amount of confusion which could be used to cover actions that would otherwise be considered politically unsavoury.

With such a large build-up of U.S. forces in the area many of the oil producing nations in the Middle East must be on tip-toe, looking for a change in the wind. As the legitimacy of the U.S. presence in Iraq wears thinner and thinner they will look more conspicuous with every passing month. As Peak Oil comes closer everyone will edge closer and closer to a political-emotional state of mind that may drag the Gulf into a state of agitation that could lead to yet another war.