Did the U.S. Plan on Seizing Arab Oil Fields?
The Bus Running on Arab Oil Money
Redux: Lebanon Asks U.S. To Remove Ban on Hezbollah T.V. & U.S. Bans Arab Channels
Days of Rage on the Arab street
The Angry Arab Speaks
Did the Mossad Plan to Kill A Swedish Intellectual
America's interests in the Middle East come down to oil. Yes there is the lofty rhetoric about the 'unshakable' support and bonds between the U.S. and Israel. But foreign policy is not about emotions. It is about interests.
And it is oil that sparked and till this days sustains U.S. interest and entanglement in the region. Since the days of the discover of oil in Saudi Arabia and the meeting between Ibn Saud, the first Saudi ruler, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt; U.S. has maintained a presence of sorts in the region which has exceeded normal diplomatic missions.
This presence intensified and become even overbearing in the aftermath of World War 2 with the British and French empires shattered and the U.S. picking up the pieces in the region and subsequently becoming the dominant power.
The remarkable thing about U.S. interest in the region's oil started even before the U.S. became a significant importer and sustains itself despite the fact that America is not as dependent on Mideast oil as many assume. Only 12% of U.S. oil consumption is from the Mideast. Canada, Mexico and Venezuela are respective the three biggest sources of foreign oil for the U.S.
Nonetheless, it is enough oil for America to be worried about, and more importantly, the free flow of oil is a concern since any regional instability which affects the oil market will affect the price of oil and since it is an international commodity the price is universal and will mean higher prices for Americans and a strain on the U.S. economy.
In that regard, the U.S. is greatly protective of Mideast oil and seeks to place its interests about that of the oil producers. For instance, the U.S. often demands that Gulf nations account for American economic interests when deciding on the quotes which will, of course, determine global prices.
So much is the U.S. a watcher of Mideast oil that British intelligence at one point considered that the U.S. may consider expropriating the region's oil fields:
"British spy chiefs warned after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war that they believed the United States might invade Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi to seize their oil fields, according to records released Thursday. A British intelligence committee report from December, 1973, said the United States was so angry over Arab nations' earlier decision to cut oil production and impose an embargo on the United States that seizing oil-producing areas in the region was “the possibility uppermost in American thinking.”
After the 1973 embargo, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger did in fact utter the words that in any similar future scenarios where the U.S. was threatened economically in matters relating to oil it may seek to capture the oil fields.
Such statements and obsessions is why most Arabs believe the war in Iraq was about oil, why the fear U.S. taking over of oil fields in that country and elsewhere and why U.S.-Iranian antagonism is related at some level to oil.
