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I've written three posts on this issue in the last week. I think this is about US banking and financial interests primarily which of course are inextricably intertwined with the oil interests and allied with the defense contractors. The almighty dollar comes first. My posts are reproduced below and i think they are superior to a recent Stratfor analysis and other newsletter amateurs that I receive. Palast is on the right track but....
This is about protecting the petrodollar
it was in danger of going below important support at 80. The economy of the haves and have mores is under attack. OPEC, Russia, and Iran want to trade in other currencies. Iran will tip the balance against dollar dominance since WWII. The deterioration, and decline of the US economy will become official.
This is enforcement of the value of the dollar at the point of a gun. They will stage whatever scary events and create whatever security threats they need to intimidate the oil rich sheikdoms on the gulf. Iran is on the table, the embargo, sanctions, interference with internal energy development projects are all meant (as economic warfare goes) to prevent the balance from tipped against the petrodollar.
If their desperate gambit doesn't work, they will make wilder and wilder schemes to defend the almighty petrodollar of the have-mores. That is their constituency. They have always succeeded in the past, so they assume they will succeed again. GS is in charge. Because this is the policy of the super rich, it is being blamed on neo-cons, personality traits of the dimson, incompetence, etc. There is very much a consistent logic behind the moves being made.
The Saudis are frightened by US created crisis in Iraq
Unconstitutional and unchecked Shia power in Iraq has removed a major check to Iranian power in the region. US aggression against Iran, the sanctions, the financial embargo, the constant threats of military attack, the drummed up nuclear issue, have created a gulf wide security crisis. And now, in the ultimate irony, Bush political failure in November causes widespread rumblings of American withdrawal.
The Saudi position is this, if you allow unchecked Shia power in Iraq and withdraw, we will go all out to restore Sunni power in Iraq. This would be accomplished by financing, arming, supplying, training whatever Sunni forces are necessary, including men commonly referred to as al quaeda who are nothing more than intelligence assets from Saudi Arabia and other islamic states. The Saudi position makes sense from several points of view, if you abandon morality, as is common in such matters. An unrestricted civil war without US interference would ultimately arrive at a political resolution at some point earlier than it will with US presence. The Saudis want to see stability. They are a status quo power. It is the US which is interested in toppling regimes to obtain control of oil fields and to defend the weakening monopoly of the petrodollar.
This crisis has resulted in increased US military commitment in return for Saudi and the other sheikdoms abandoning their OPEC commitments to shore up the failing dollar, which came perilously close to breaking support before the Saudi oil price bailout after new years.
This is a two faced game on both sides
I believe that the Saudis need to be engaged in iraq because the neo-con, oil/ financial/ defense contractor objectives are not really attainable as stated. Continued and interminable conflict is the real (sub rosa) US/UK objective and the natural effect of what they are doing in Iraq and to Iran.
Saudi Arabia and the other sheikdoms are very definitely status quo powers. They are frightened by the unstable situation the US has created on their doorstep. Such actions were to be limited to the former soviet areas much further away. It is Israel, UK and US who seek to overturn regimes and change the status quo in the middle east for their own benefit.
The Saudis and other persian gulf nations are vulnerable to their own internal security and regime change problems. How could they embrace the current US created instability without demanding US troop increases, naval presence, missile defense, or else? In order to get it, they must comply with US oil inventory demands.
Creative destruction in the middle east, is it only to be applied to Iraq, Iran and Syria without any impact on Saudi Arabia? This is not likely. Saudi Arabia, is in my opinion, doomed in the long run. They need to set an independent policy or be set up. I can't help but think that they already provide covert support for sunnis in Iraq. They are also primary financiers of al qaeda which is the instrument used by Saudi, US, and Pakistani intel agencies respectively on an opportunistic basis. I think that the Saudis have more leverage in this area than any other other nation, particularly in the gulf region and Iraq. In league with the US, thhey sought to benefit from terrorism, (central Asia, trans caucasus, Serbia, Kosovo, etc.) but now they find themselves potentially on the "creative destruction" plate. They deftly try to use diplomacy and economic power to defend themselves.
All the bs about nuclear programs in Iran is nonsense. Why would Iran be any more inclined to use such weapons in future than any other power that could blown to smithereens by the US or Israel? This is a red herring. A simple statement that SA and the sheikdoms are within the vital interests of the US completely neutralizes any such threat. Israel's deterrent is sufficient in and of itself. The complications are caused by US aggressive designs on the area which are poorly disguised by nonsense pre-emptive doctrines embracing the use of nuclear weapons and prompting proliferation. The real problem with growing Iranian military power, is that if you don't know whether they have nuclear weapons or not, you can never attack them again and hope for a decisive victory or other favorable/controlled outcome.
I think it can be stated as a fundamental principle that any truly sovereign state with resources is going to adopt an anti-imperialist/nationalistic policy that opposes US/UK interference in their markets or resources without arms length transactions on a level playing field. Therefore, what the US nominally seeks in Iraq and Iran can never be achieved. Chaos, divide and conquer, creative destruction, and outright conquest are the imperial alternatives which really dominate the thinking of the elites in the financial, defense, energy, sectors whose views are openly espoused by the neo-cons. These people aren't rouges or fringe elements. This is what they are really doing.
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