How Iran Has Bush Over a Barrel
June 13th, 2008“The Iranian strategic military plan for engaging the United States must include crippling oil exports from the Persian Gulf. Iran is (probably) in a position to close the Strait of Hormuz, the most strategically important waterway in the world.”
—Cryptogon, 7/15/2006, The Strait of Hormuz: It’s Not That Bad, It’s Worse
FYI: Robert Baer, the author of the following piece, was a CIA case officer.
Via: Time:
If wasn’t clear before it should be now: the Bush Administration can’t afford to attack Iran. With gas already at $4 a gallon and rising almost every day, Iran figuratively and literally has the United States over a barrel. As much as the Administration is tempted, it is not about to test Iran’s promise to “explode” the Middle East if it is attacked.
The Iranians haven’t been shy about making clear what’s at stake. If the U.S. or Israel so much as drops a bomb on one of its reactors or its military training camps, Iran will shut down Gulf oil exports by launching a barrage of Chinese Silkworm missiles on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and Arab oil facilities. In the worst case scenario, seventeen million barrels of oil would come off world markets.
One oil speculator told me that oil would hit $200 a barrel within minutes. But Iran’s official news agency, Fars, puts it at $300 a barrel. I asked him if Iran is right, what does that mean?
“Four-dollar-a-gallon of gasoline only reflects $100 oil because the refiners’ margins are squeezed,” he said. “At $300, you have $12 a gallon of gasoline and riots in Newark, Los Angeles, Harlem, Oakland, Cleveland, Detroit, Dallas.”
In either case, whether at $200 or $300, Bush does not want to be the President who leaves the White House on a mule-drawn cart. But Iran’s blackmail is not just about oil. The Iranians truly believe they have us hostage in Iraq — our supply lines, the acquiescence of the Shi’a in the occupation. It would all change in an instant, though, especially if we were to borrow Iraq to attack Iran. The way Fars put it: “In Iraq, fighters would rise up in solidarity with each other and begin … making the Tet Offensive in 1968 Vietnam.”
If this all sounds very alarming, Iran meant it to, and it seems to be working. On Tuesday Bush was talking about the prospect of new sanctions rather than attacking.
Which leaves Israel. Are the Israelis, who have a lot more on their minds than the price of gas in the United States, going to launch a pre-emptive attack? One hard and fast rule in the Middle East is never rule out Israel’s readiness to turn the table over. But an Israeli hawk on Iran, with close ties to Israel’s Ministry of Defense, told me to forget about it. “There’s not a chance Israel will do anything. Maybe there’s a window after the American elections and the new President but even that’s doubtful. Washington does not have the stomach for another war.”
Israel cannot attack or contain Iran on its own; it needs the full military might of the United States behind it. So in the meantime Israel can only huff and puff, hoping new sanctions on Iran will do the trick.
Related: Zbigniew Brzezinski Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Totally hilarious!
teh 13th mahdi has teh USALAND over a barrel
go ahead lose a couple carrier group’s
if you dare!
Nice to see someone calling teh bluff
Interesting.
So Kevin, what’s your take on Baer? Is he a principled and responsible man who left a corrupt agency to tell his tales, or is he so deep in bed with the anti-Bush faction of elitists (like Brzezinski and Baker) that you have to read his prose like Pravda articles in the 1980s?
I’ll second that emotion: what’s your take on Baer?
Personally, I place guys like Baer and Chalmers in the category of gatekeeper.
The strategy: reveal damning insider facts in a well-researched fashion, confirming the obvious bits already ferreted out of the existing circumstancial evidence, by way of appearing highly credible to the dissenting set.
In this practical guise, they serve as a useful lightning rod for a great deal of investigative energy AND they are also able to render certain aspects of the circumstancial base “out of bounds” by still demonstrating support for key aspects of the greater official memes in play.
Obfuscation via revelation, to make it short and sweet.
I take their existence as confirmation of parts of the unofficial historical narrative known in the contemporary lingo as “conspiracy theory”, and take an odd kind of comfort in their draw-the-line defense of the stranger aspects of the system — which they still insist can be reformed — currently tightening its grip around America’s throat.
Tactically, they are no longer able to simply ignore the problem and must exert some weight of effort against the meme indirectly, by way of penning in all but the least susceptible of the less susceptible minds into the modern, rational myth of random future events.
We are all resonant instruments.
I have absolutely no idea what to make of Baer, just like I have absolutely no idea what to make of just about any other mainstream source. I’ve come to treat most of what appears in the mainstream press as, “Pravda articles in the 1980s.”
If the family jewels were to spill onto the floor in front of us, would we even know what we were looking at? I certainly wouldn’t. Well, not with any degree of confidence.
Someone as jaded as me would note them, file the note away and hope to find some tidbits of data in the future that might allow us to say, “Yes, those were probably the family jewels.” Or, “Nope. Try again.”
On a basic level, what revelations ever emerge in the doctor’s office waiting room publications? Time, Newsweek, Business Week, etc.
It’s like the “food” that’s served on airlines. You might eat that shit, but you don’t expect to gain any nourishment from it. You just hope it doesn’t make you sick.