'Toontime: The Last Chance Saloon

[credit: Steven Benson, Arizona Republic]

Wackydoodle sez: That boy has amazin' flexibility!

Why does a President of the United States threaten Iran with the "last chance" to avoid attack when when there is no objective evidence that an Iranian policy to obtain nuclear weapons exists? Could it have something to do with their oil? The Obaminator recently informed Iran they must give up their inalienable treaty right to civilian nuclear power by closing the Fordow enrichment facility and surrendering their stockpile of 20% enriched--not weapons grade--uranium. Iranian officials understandably responded that such demands are "irrational". Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2003 condemning nuclear weapons as un-Islamic. For Shitte Muslims, his word is law. Even our own intelligence establishment has concluded on more than one occasion that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program since 2003. Israeli intelligence reached the same conclusion. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has never found evidence of a weapons program notwithstanding a recent report mischaracterized as damning by neoconservative and other assorted war mongers. The report made much of IAEA inspectors being denied access to a military base which was examined in 2004, 2005 and 2006. It repeats the bugaboo of a laptop computer allegedly containing the design for a warhead; such material can be easily faked and it comes from a biased source, the Mujahaddin Khalq (MEK), a militant Iranian exile group. It is the Niger {yellowcake} story all over again. None of this information appears widespread in the corporate mass media (CMM). The confrontation with Iran is there repeatedly portrayed as a fight for existential survival in the face of a nuclear armed nation ruled by religious fanatics, a storyline eerily similar to the media blitz before the Iraq invasion. In a world that literally turns on crude oil, the operative answer for apparent American disconnect with reality lies in the control of the most important commodity in the world.

credit: Ron Hera, Marketoracle.co.uk

Iran, the world's third largest oil exporter, and the major supplier of China and India, lies outside U.S. control. Iran refuses to sell its oil for US dollars for reasons stretching back half a century to the CIA inspired coup against the elected Iranian government. Proponents of a war with Iran surely have not lost sight of the fact that if Iranian oil were traded in dollars, the financial effect after an initial spike would be to moderate the price of crude oil, extend leverage over the main consumers of Iranian oil, ease pressure on the beleaguered US economy, and perhaps most importantly, extend the status of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. In March, the US unilaterally removed Iran from banking's SWIFT system, effectively cutting it off from world commerce. But as world trade fragments into trading blocs, and crude oil and gold prices increase due to central bank fiat money policies, the central position of the dollar weakens. If the dollar's preeminent reserve status breaks down, the US is in position to resort to violent action.

The importance of oil in geopolitics can be encapsulated in just one map of Iran and its neighbors in the Middle East [above]. Each star represents a US military installation. Iran is surrounded by more than 40 American bases not to mention a fleet of US warships in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. A war against Iran before it 'goes nuclear', even if the inevitability is only in the minds of actual Dr. Strangeloves, could accomplish what financial weapons cannot completely accomplish: continued world hegemony based on unlimited credit. The malaise of sovereign debt crisis currently confined to Europe could become America's problem in the future. Unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities of the federal government are currently estimated to be more than $63 trillion. Although the extremely expensive occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are scheduled to be history by 2014, neoconservative foreign policies have largely been endorsed by the current occupant. No one from the previous administration has been called to account for lies told to the American public justifying the Iraq War and Occupation; no former official has been prosecuted for authorizing torture; the President now claims the unprecedent and unconstitutional right to kill US citizens merely suspected of terrorism; the Guantanomo gulag still operates ten years later. He told AIPAC, the powerful Israel lobby, "I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests. I do not bluff." He won't need to because after his last election in 2012, the Obamanator will definitely have more flexibility.