I Wonder If Oil Is Involved?
MAY 27, 2026
I was reading an old Atlantic Monthly from November 2007 and came across this quote:
We’ve got to be patient and committed [in Iraq], but we’ve got to multitask … We’ve got to talk about Iran—Iran is more dangerous than Iraq—and we have got to get the job done in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
That was Rudolph Giuliani, speaking as a Republican presidential candidate in July 2007.
Back then, the saying was that everyone wants to go to Baghdad but that real men want to go to Tehran. Weirdly, neither Iran nor Iraq had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks in 2001. What those countries did have was oil—and lots of it.
The Iran obsession persists, of course, and it’s shared by both political parties. When she ran for president in 2024, Kamala Harris identified Iran as the greatest adversarythe United States faced in the world.
The truth is that neither Iran nor Iraq posed a direct or imminent threat to the USA. What each country possessed was an enormous amount of oil and political leaders who didn’t want to kowtow to U.S. economic imperatives.
A joke I learned circa 1975 involving calculators (fairly new back then) remains revealing of what drives the American obsession with the Middle East. It goes like this: 142 Israelis fight 154 Arabs over 69 oil wells for 5 years. Who wins? Punch 14215469 into your calculator, multiply by 5, then invert your calculator.
The result, which was amusing when I was about twelve years old:
Shell Oil!
Of course, U.S. and British meddling in Iran dates back to 1953 with the overthrow of its democratically elected leader Mohammad Mosaddegh so that British oil interests wouldn’t be threatened by efforts to nationalize Iran’s huge oil reserves.
Which brings me back to 1975 and one of my favorite movies, Three Days of the Condor, and a little honesty about what Americans expect from the CIA. I’ve always loved the speech near the end by CIA deputy director Higgins, played memorably by Cliff Robertson:
Higgins: It’s simple economics. Today it’s oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?
Joe Turner: Ask them?
Higgins: Not now – then! Ask ‘em when they’re running out. Ask ‘em when there’s no heat in their homes and they’re cold. Ask ‘em when their engines stop. Ask ‘em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won’t want us to ask ‘em. They’ll just want us to get it for ‘em!
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And yet, despite what Higgins says, today the US government isn’t even that effective at stealing the oil, though it is true that Shell Oil and other fossil fuel conglomerates are making a killing as oil and gas prices soar.
Addendum: Shell Oil is now Shell plc or Shell Global. Judging by the Shell quarterly dividend report from the first quarter of this year, things are looking very bright indeed:
Shell delivered strong results enabled by our relentless focus on operational performance in a quarter marked by unprecedented disruption in global energy markets… Last week we announced the acquisition of ARC Resources, accelerating our strategy by adding complementary, high-quality, low-cost liquids and gas assets that we believe will deliver value for decades to come. Today, consistent with our value driven capital allocation philosophy, we are rebalancing our shareholder distributions, with a $3 billion share buyback programme for the next 3 months and a 5% increase in the dividend, in line with our existing 40-50% of CFFO distribution policy.
Excuse the snark, but the real green energy surge, “green” as in money, remains dirty fossil fuels.
Bracing Views 
Is a truism any less valid because it’s a snark?
“Higgins: ‘It’s simple economics. Today it’s oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?… Not now – then! Ask ‘em when they’re running out. Ask ‘em when there’s no heat in their homes and they’re cold. Ask ‘em when their engines stop. Ask ‘em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won’t want us to ask ‘em. They’ll just want us to get it for ‘em!’”
That (in)famous, chilling scene. My memory keeps getting tested, I think it may have been a year or so ago when I came across an item about the Pentagon doing planning – of the “war” variety, most likely – given global warming. What I found (disturbingly) interesting was that this planning wasn’t at all centered upon mitigating the effects of global warming, such as by lowering the Pentagon’s carbon footprint (just how…?). No, it was military planning to secure oil, raw materials, and other likely scarcities as the climate was upended by droughts in some areas, floods in others, crop failures, huge migrations, you get the picture. In other words, a variation of “he who has the most toys wins.”
See Abby Martin’s “Earth’s Greatest Enemy,” “Abby Martin reveals how the US military, as the world’s largest polluter, impacts the environment while operating with minimal accountability.” Imdb.com
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I don’t think it is that we want possession of their oil. I think it is our determination to dominate the world with Iran defying us along with the extremely powerful Zionist influence that wants the only country that prevents Israel from hegemony taken down. Any American Zionist will denounce Iran.
This is in keeping with all the talk about how evil Iran is, that it cannot be allowed nuclear weapons and the fact that not having any has not kept Israel from beating the war drums for decades finally succeeding in taking us into actual war. Iran is an Israeli obsession.
Its oil keeps Iran afloat economically so that all our sanctions cannot force them to toe our line. They also can supply oil to China, India and Europe independent of us and that is not appreciated. The relatively brief but destructive exchanges with Israel show conclusively that Iran is beyond doubt a restraint on what Israel can do. This is what is driving Israel crazy, it cannot have total domination even without Iran having nukes. It cannot continue as it has to do as it wishes with no consequences.
Israel, not Iran is the proven threat to all the countries of the middle east. Naftali Bennett who would love to replace Netanyahu as PM has talked of Israel taking on Turkey. Israel is the very definition of a loose cannon that has caused incredible suffering primarily for the Palestinians but for all around it since 1948, Iranians now taking serious casualties as well.
The US must break the grip of Israel ASAP. It is proceeding as all Americans can now clearly see the monster that Israel is driven by the fanaticism of Zionism, easily as fanatic as was National Socialism in Germany.
The country of liberty and justice for all, the proven safe home for Jews as for all other groups, putting all the might of the world’s only superpower into protecting a pointless ethnic supremacy for a people whose equal rights are fully protected here in America. The hypocrisy is astounding.
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“The US must break the grip of Israel ASAP. It is proceeding as all Americans can now clearly see the monster that Israel is driven by the fanaticism of Zionism, easily as fanatic as was National Socialism in Germany.
“The country of liberty and justice for all, the proven safe home for Jews as for all other groups, putting all the might of the world’s only superpower into protecting a pointless ethnic supremacy for a people whose equal rights are fully protected here in America. The hypocrisy is astounding.”
Yes, the grip must be broken, for our sake, for the world’s, and yes, the hypocrisy is astounding. Now read this sobering bit of frightening reality https://responsiblestatecraft.org/israel-us-military/?mc_cid=1423e8bd61
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The grip is tightening even as it becomes more of a secret handshake–or death grip.
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My God, am I wrong in seeing history not necessarily repeat, but rhyme, in the run-up to World War I, only this time World War Last?
I think the consensus among historians is that everyone bore some responsibility for allowing that catastrophe to happen. This time it was Yawah Sinwar who sent a message to the West, and for the rest of the world to note, what they but in particular Israel and the United States had been up to for over 100 years in Palestine. His hope may have been that justice would be served. It hasn’t been, instead a ramping up of the genocide, the deepening of Israeli ruthlessness, this country complicit. A nuclear powder keg in the offing?
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That calculator gag is still funny! I never heard it before.
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