Sunday, January 8, 2012

Winners and Losers

When you think policy makes no sense, perhaps you just haven't figured out who benefits.

With Washington's humiliating public pressure on Iran pushing Tehran into the proverbial corner, from where it will predictably fight tooth and nail, one can only wonder what Washington's real game is. Clearly, a rational U.S. policy designed to persuade Tehran to relinquish nuclear arms would be designed to demonstrate that Iran would be more secure without the bomb than with it, yet the U.S. policy teaches Iran precisely the opposite. Similarly, if Washington's goal is to get the Iranians to change their regime, then making a hero out of Ahmadinejad is obviously not the way to do it. So exactly what is Washington's goal?

Ask yourself who will benefit from halting Iran's oil trade. Supplies will tighten, prices will go up...and the American people will see their dollars flood into the hands of Big Oil and the Saudis, who, incidentally, don't seem too worried at all about the prospects of a U.S.-Iranian crisis.

Once that has sunk in, here's another question: what would happen if Iran were invited to sell all the oil it wants? Gas prices would drop. Now that would be a financial crisis.

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