When I was in Qatar last week, the mood seemed to be one of pondering over not
whether America will attack Iran, but
when, with some people thinking it could be imminent. Having already opened one very large Pandora’s Box next door in Iraq, is the time right to open another? And what are the
real reasons behind it?
History is not short of examples of US military intervention resulting in an ignominious disaster – Bay of Pigs, Viet Nam, the abortive rescue of the ~50 hostages being held in Iran – (as compared with the slick operation of Britain’s SAS to liberate the Iranian embassy in London) and now Iraq, where more than 2000 US service personnel have died since the campaign began and there's no end in sight.
The public was told that the
whole case for going to war was the presence of WMD in Iraq, and that weapons could be deployed against Western interests in as little as 45 minutes. As we now know, this was all a tissue of lies, as no WMD has ever been found. So what was the
real reason for the invasion? A great many people thought it was “all about oil”, indeed the anti-war protesters carried banners bearing the caption “No War for Oil”. In his book, “The End of Oil”, Paul Roberts notes that upon entering Iraq, the US military secured key oil installations. Was this to prevent Saddam from torching his own wells, as he did in 1991? If so, was this because of concerns about global warming, or was it because of the potential ecological disaster and the impact it would have on the wildlife in that region? It must be one of these two reasons, and there can be no other explanation. The fact that America’s consumption of oil is 25% of total world oil output which, at more than 20m barrels a day is three times as much as the second largest oil consumer, China, is of course a red herring which should be discounted.
I must admit to having a few concerns about flying out to Qatar last week, and did searches on newspaper websites looking for tensions in Qatar. All I could find was that they’ve removed Danish products from their supermarket shelves. So why would Bush want to bomb the Al Jazeera radio station in Qatar which was built with a $150m grant from the Emir of Qatar? (Story here:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1651765,00.html ) I mean it’s just a radio station, right? What happened to the right to freedom of speech, as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which begins “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;” ??? Presumably, the follow up would be a military presence in Qatar, which all sounds a bit heavy handed, until one remembers that in these twilight years of oil, the natural gas reserves in tiny little Qatar are the third largest in the world, and are nearly five times as large as those in the United States. But how silly of me to even
hint that the US might invade a country to plunder its wealth of energy reserves. We know that would
never be on the cards.
Which brings us to back to Iran - is the proposal to get tough with Iran because of its aspirations to become a nuclear power? Oh well, at least Iran
admits an interest in developing nukes. But the US military is going to end up being spread so thinly that any military initiative might not be viable. With support for the Bush administration at an all time low, would it get away with starting a new war so soon after Iraq, particularly in view of the absence of any WMD which was the whole case for going to war in the first place, and with recruitment into the military now in free fall as would-be applicants wise up to what may be their fate? And even if the answer is yes, is this the real reason for taking a tough line with Iran? It may be worth remembering that Iran has the
second largest natural gas reserves in the world, more than five times the size of the gas reserves in the United States. But how silly of me to even
hint that the US might invade a country to plunder its wealth of energy reserves. We know that would
never be on the cards.
