Greenspan’s Open Secret

It Really is About Oil–and Not Just in Iraq

So, the secret is finally out. The Iraq war and occupation is about oil! Alan Greenspan, the man on whom the capitalist press has conferred the title of sage numerous times, says exactly that in his memoirs released this week. Of course, many folks around the world have assumed this for years but, even so, it’s nice to hear it from one of Washington’s own. It was the concern of those that pull the strings on Wall Street and in DC that Saddam Hussein represented a severe threat to their access to oil that prompted the war. According to George Bush and his henchmen, it is the concern that anti-US “extremists” also threaten that access that causes the war and occupation to continue.
Of course, these so-called extremists seemed to be primarily composed of Iraqi nationalists who simply want to control their own destinies and not leave them up to a small handful of men with offices in the Green Zone whose lives and livelihood depend on the continued presence of US forces on Iraqi soil.

Oil and other energy resources are also the reason Washington is threatening Iran. There are other factors certainly, not least among them a desire for revenge on the Iranian revolution, but the fundamental motivation for the US threats of military action against Iran is to replace the current regime in Tehran with one that will do Washington’s bidding and provide them with access to that nation’s oil on terms set by DC, not Tehran. That is why the US overthrew Mossadegh back in 1953 and why it supported the Shah even after he was overthrown in 1979. Iran is estimated to have the world’s fifth largest oil reserve and second largest natural gas supply. But, if this is so, then why can’t the US just buy the stuff from them? It could, of course, but that would go against the stated desire of Washington to not only have unfettered access to energy resources, but to also be able to prevent potential competitors from having similar access. In other words, the men and women that run the US want exclusive control over the energy resources of Iraq and Iran and the only way they can get that is through military action, since Hussein was not going to agree to US terms for oil sales and neither will the Tehran regime.

Counterpunch