It’s all about oil: another war, same script

Oh look, another oil war. When I heard about the US-Israeli bombing of Iran, and Iran’s retaliation – Dubai hotels on fire, thoughts and prayers for the influencers – the first thing I did was fill my car with petrol, because the Gulf of Persia’s narrowest strait is largely controlled by Iran and a fifth of all oil is shipped through there.

Otherwise, no surprises. We’re liberating the people, declared the administration yet again; we’re preventing nuclear weapon proliferation (like the apparent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2002). Oil? Who said oil?

Liberation, sanctions and seized tankers

This is merely an expansion of what happened in January in Venezuela, when the US nabbed the country’s president, said it was freeing the people from a dictator, then claimed all rights to their country’s oil reserves.

That was merely an extension of the US military’s December capture of a Venezuelan oil tanker off the country’s coast, which would be labelled piracy had anyone else done it.

And that was merely a continuation of the 30-odd deadly US strikes against boats purportedly smuggling drugs, which meant a build-up of military in the region to police all that lovely oil.

This was an adjunct to the oil blockade against that longtime carbuncle in the US shoe, Cuba, where anyone even gifting the country fuel faced immediate US sanction.

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From Soleimani to sanctions

Then draw a straight line to January 2020, during Trump’s first term, when the US assassinated top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani.

This came after the US withdrawal in 2018 from an Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran, and the imposition of sanctions, leading to rapid economic decline, culminating in the mass protests last year which were so horrifically suppressed by a nasty regime – a nasty regime with oil. It all resounds in Trump’s oildrunk posturing, in his administration’s climate change denial.

Drill, baby, drill

On Tuesday he announced, “We just received from our new friend and partner, Venezuela, more than 80 million barrels of oil.”

It’s all about oil. Production costs for Iran’s easily extractable oil are as low as $10 a barrel, while in the US it’s $40 per barrel.

A high oil price boosts US profits, and production, too, as it becomes more economically viable to drill. So drill, baby, drill: drill down and underneath it all is oil. Oil and money

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