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Waging a green war against Iran
By Geof Wollerman
gwollerm@mscd.edu

According to GlobalSecurity.org, in 2000 Iran had the fifth largest proven oil reserves in the world, with some 89 billion barrels – or 9 percent of the world’s oil – compared with the United States’ scant 22 billion barrels. Iran is arguably the most free-thinking oil-producing country in the world, and has been, to the United States’ chagrin, for many years. But now the high price of oil has created a whole new Iranian political beast.

For the last 20 years oil prices have fluctuated between $10 and $30 a barrel. But beginning in 2001, oil prices have steadily gone up, due to political uncertainty in oil-producing countries, and oil now sits at around $60 a barrel. That’s a 100 percent increase. What does a country not in the United States’ pocket do with all those profits? What any other cash-rich, politically motivated country does: start proxy wars to further its own interests.

One of Iran’s interests, aside from enriching uranium, is the dissolution of Israel. So it funds Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, two once-marginal groups that wage guerilla campaigns against Israel. I say “once-marginal” because both Hamas and Hezbollah have slowly risen from obscurity to an ingrained political status: Hamas was democratically elected to a majority of the Palestinian parliament, and as for Hezbollah, ever since it helped drive Israel out of Lebanon in 2000, it “has presented itself as a political party, gaining two posts in the Lebanese cabinet and fourteen seats in the parliament,” according to Jon Lee Anderson in The New Yorker.

While the war between Israel and Hezbollah doesn’t have anything to do with oil, Iran, as stated above, does. And Iran’s part in the conflict has had a twofold effect. First, in failing to destroy Hezbollah (because of, we can assume, Iranian help), Israel has emboldened it, creating a landslide of anti-Israeli sentiment. As reported in The New York Times, in post-war Lebanon Hezbollah “is already dominating the efforts to rebuild with a torrent of money from oil-rich Iran.” The leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Nasrallah, is seen to have benefited immensely from the war. According to the Times, a Beirut columnist, Rami Kouri, said Nasrallah’s “prominence is one of the important political repercussions of this war.” The second effect of the war was to create a convenient diversion from Iran’s continued enrichment program.

To sum the conflict up, Anderson quoted a Western diplomat: “Without any cost to Iran, Lebanon is getting devastated, Israel is taking hits, and the Iranians are getting (a) distraction from the nuclear issue. They must be very happy right now.”

So happy, in fact, that Iran taunted the United States and other members of the UN Security Council just days before Iran was to announce its response to an incentives package for halting its nuclear program. Two days after the announced cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, Iran announced, according to The New York Times, “that it does not intend to halt its uranium enrichment program.” The article said a senior Iranian cleric “warned the United States in a sermon … not to initiate a war on Iran over its nuclear program.” It then quoted the cleric: “We hope America has learned a lesson from the war in Lebanon and refrains from getting involved in another conflict.”

The United States cannot afford to allow Iran to go unchecked. Unfortunately, it cannot afford to deal with it militarily. The only other option is to take away its spending power and slow its global influence, and the only way to take away its spending power is to decrease – sorry, Big Energy – the price of crude oil. But how do we do that?

In an article for Foreign Policy, Times columnist Thomas Friedman asserts, “Although we cannot affect the supply of oil in any country, we can affect the global price of oil by altering the amounts and types of energy we consume.” Friedman points out that the United States consumes “about 25 percent of the world’s energy.” The article, which draws a strong correlation between high oil prices and declining freedoms, also states that the higher oil prices go, “the less (oil-producing state) leaders are sensitive to what the world thinks or says about them.” Sound familiar?

Regarding the quagmire in the Middle East, in late July the Denver Post editorialized, “The (Bush) administration now needs to prove to its challengers that it’s well prepared to walk and chew gum at the same time.” But if Friedman’s article holds even one grain of truth, the administration would do well to learn how to pat its head and rub its belly at the same time, too.

For anyone in doubt about the virtues of going green, your time is up. We need alternative energy solutions, and we need them now. Our delicate political position in the world depends on it.