Pipe dream
So what is Washington's last best hope for putting an end to Iran's nuclear program without military force? $40-a-barrel oil.
I kid you not.
Steve Clemons, one of Washington's better-connected bloggers, reports from the Arab Strategy Forum in Dubai, where someone he characterizes as "one of the most prominent incumbent national security officials in the Middle East" floats the following cockamamie idea to put the screws to Iran without military force.
This senior policy official…said that there is only one non-military way to break Iran's current course, and that the military option was not credible and would not be supported in the region. This official said that the only way to stop Iran at this point was to make the price of oil plummet.
He said that America could engineer this with coordinated support from oil producers in the Gulf Cooperation Council.
The price of a dramatic increase in oil production would be expeditious movement — real movement — on Israel-Palestine negotiations towards a viable state of Palestine and a clear, coordinated plan on Iran.
He said that though the GCC were close, many-decades-long allies of America that the U.S. regularly ignores its regional allies and has not communicated its basic policy course on Iran…
It seemed clear to me that this prominent person believed that it was well within the power of major oil suppliers to get the price of oil below $40/barrel — and that this would stifle Iran's growing influence significantly.
Yeah, like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait & Co. can just open up the spigots. Has this guy ever heard of Peak Oil? Does he realize that $40-a-barrel oil can be accomplished only by wrecking the region's already precarious reserves with ever-increasing amounts of injected water?
But this might all be a smokescreen anyway. The Pentagon is already deep into "second-stage" planning for an attack on Iran — the ultimate Hail Mary pass to salvage Team Bush's disaster in the Middle East.
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