U.S. standoff with Iran helps pump up prices

Bush shouldn’t make hasty move, most experts say

Steaming drivers furious at $3-a-gallon gas can direct at least part of their anger at the row between the United States and Iran, which experts agree helps increase prices by frightening investors — and there isn’t much anybody can do about it in the short term.

Most of America’s options on Iran offer little promise of lowering prices, according to several foreign policy experts, and some could push them still higher.

Several warned against radical short-term fixes, such as tapping the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve, and they predicted that even if tensions don’t diminish, the price of oil will — in time.

“Remember, this will play out over months, if not years,” said Anthony Cordesman, an expert on energy and the Middle East at the private Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “If the president commits the SPR to deal with a panic, the end result could be a very costly way of damping a panic that would fade in any case.”

San Francisco Chronicle