By Jim Mullins
Posted May 12 2006
We are now witnessing another fear-inducing barrage of propaganda mirroring the exaggeration and deception that led to the ongoing debacle in Iraq. This time the target is Iran, with the same underlying but unspoken rationale: continuing control of worldwide trade of oil in U.S. dollars and its production in pliant and friendly hands.

Saddam’s unforgivable sin was to persuade the U.N. to allow him to sell oil for euros in the Oil for Food program, bringing him a huge windfall as the dollar fell and the euro advanced. When the U.S. invaded Baghdad, it secured the oil ministry and moved quickly to convert oil sales back to the dollar.

Iran has gone further, announcing the opening next week of the Iran Oil Bourse, a worldwide exchange, trading in euros and breaking the U.S. monopoly. (When President Nixon abandoned the gold standard and converted to a fiat currency backed by the good faith and credit of the U.S., OPEC agreed to continue oil transactions in dollars only.) This will result in a flood of dollars, now held in the world’s central banks, coming back to the U.S. and hitting the wall of our massive trade deficit and without the trade surplus we once enjoyed — a dismal prospect in that we have allowed our industrial production to decline while borrowing from foreign countries to offset the deficit.

The International Monetary Fund has warned the U.S. that its trade deficit — grown from $114 billion in 1995 to $805 billion — is unsustainable. Its economic counselor, Raghuram Rajan, describes its position as “just simple economics.”

Another issue lies in Iran’s geographic advantage in transporting oil and natural gas from the Caspian Sea area. An oil pipeline through Iran to the Arabian Sea for tanker shipment, or the proposed gas pipeline through Iran and Pakistan to India, makes far more sense in every respect than the U.S.-favored route through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

President Bush’s offer to provide nuclear technology to India in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and U.S. law was a transparent ploy to get it to abandon the Iranian pipeline.

Cash-strapped Pakistan would lose both access to the natural gas and $700 million in yearly royalties. Pakistani President Musharraf is in a bind, for most Pakistanis chafe at his support for U.S. policies and have a long history of friendship with Iran. Both Pakistani and Indian oil ministers have indicated that they will sign a tripartite agreement in June that will seal the Iranian pipeline project.

We might remember that in July 2001, before 9-11, the Bush administration negotiated with the Taliban to allow the pipeline through Afghanistan, had not declared Afghanistan a terrorist state and dismissed al-Qaida as a nuisance.

Brazil has decided to enrich its uranium and denied the IAEA inspections other than of the uranium going in the centrifuge process and the end product. Brazil brags about its self-sufficiency in oil yet feels a need for nuclear energy to augment its electricity production. Iran is in exactly the same position but denied the ability to have nuclear-generated electricity — a right that doesn’t violate the nonproliferation treaty or international law.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, has revealed that in 2003 Iran made an offer through the Swiss Embassy to our representative in Iran. It was signed by all Iranian top officials. It offered to negotiate the nuclear issue and Iran’s alleged support for terrorism as a response to Powell’s public demand. Powell was left hanging in the wind and the administration berated the Swiss Embassy for sending it.

This is what passes for diplomacy in the White House.

The House has just passed a resolution, the so-called Iran Freedom Support Act, that declares it is the policy of the United States to deny Iran the ability to support acts of international terrorism by limiting the development of Iran’s ability to explore for, extract, refine or transport by pipeline petroleum resources.” (emphasis added)

Apparently “free trade, open markets and globalization” are just empty phrases when U.S. monopolies on oil purchase and sales or pipeline routes are involved. China, India, Russia and perennial bogeyman Venezuela have expressed interest in euro trade in oil. Astute Americans are running up the price of gold.

Is anyone listening?

[…]

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/

You bet.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 12th, 2006 at 4:41 pm and is filed under Someone Clever Said.