Oil is Iran's Curse

During the past few weeks, Iran's Islamo-fascistic regime has been in the spotlight and some of the issues that I wasn't really aware of have drawn to my attention.

I've been thinking about the causes and the origins of the problems, and also looking for reasons why these issues have not found a solution yet.

My conclusion is that all the problems of today's Iran find their origin in oil: oil is Iran's curse. And here is why:

• If Iran had no oil, the British and American wouldn't have put the dictatorial Shah in power to get access to cheap Iranian oil and create BP.
• If Iran had no oil, the American's wouldn't have pushed Saddam Hussein — their Iraqi ally at that time — to invade Iran (and lead to a 10-year-long war, killing millions and destructing the whole economy) after the revolution that forced the Shah to leave (and the Brits to lose their access to oil).
• If Iran had no oil, the current Islamo-fascistic regime would have no funding and would have collapsed a long time ago and maybe democracy would finally have reached the Iranian people.
  

Oil and the Islamo-fascistic regime [my analysis]:

With official unemployment at more than 20%, and 70% of the people being less than 30 years old, it's difficult to find any source of income for the government. Add the fact that there's no efficient way for the government to enforce and collect taxes to people who are not employed by major corporations. Add that 4 to 5 million Bacij 'black shirt' militia are on the government payroll, on top of the normal military and police forces (total population in Iran is 70 million). Finally, add the government itself and corruption.
How do you pay for all this? You have only one real source of revenue: oil and then the printing press. The government is massively printing money, but the dollars and euros (required to buy oil) pouring into the economy are providing income to be spent on their payrolls and are also preventing the Iranian currency, the Rial, from collapsing. It is also obviously allowing a massive wealth transfer from the people to those in power. With no oil, the Rial would have collapsed and those in power would be long gone.
The easy way for the international community to get rid of the Islamo-fascistic regime would be to just embargo the Iranian oil. But that would mean that the rest of the planet would have to finance this action (by paying a higher price for oil). Even though this kind of action would have been far less costly than the US war in Iraq for example — and would also bring a lot of good karma instead of hatred — it is unlikely to ever happen due to the unability of the politicians to make difficult decisions.

Shah Pahlavi and BP:

BP started out as the Anglo Persian Oil Company and was a de facto Whitehall department after Winston Churchill converted the Royal Navy ships from coal to oil. BP's confrontation with Mossadegh's Iran was the first postwar Middle East oil shock three years before Suez and led to a joint venture CIA-M16 countercoup to replace Mossy with Shah Raza Pahlavi, a self styled King of Kings who played ball with Big Oil till his own overthrow in 1979.

Iran - Iraq war:

See Wikipedia article for a description of the war.

Read:

• Confession of an Economic Hitman (amazon.com - amazon.co.uk)
• The Secret History of the American Empire (amazon.com - amazon.co.uk)
  

Look: nice ads!

UK	UK	US	US