These are tough times to be a Middle Eastern despot, so perhaps it is understandable if a few of them feel a little paranoid right now. Iraq is under foreign occupation, Iran is in open revolt, and Saudi Arabia is apparently under attack from British bootleggers who look surprisingly like friends of Osama bin Laden. Under the circumstances, even the most pampered autocrat might be forgiven for feeling a little anxious. But what is really troubling many in the Arab world is not so much the threat of internal opposition – they have ways of dealing with that – but fear of America, and specifically fear of what America plans to do with Iraq’s oil. Few in the Middle East are in any doubt about what America has in mind: it wants to use Iraqi oil as a stick with which to beat recalcitrant Arab regimes and as a means of undermining Opec.
The theory runs something like this: the gas-guzzling US economy cannot operate without a steady supply of reasonably priced oil. Since American domestic production is dwindling, it must increasingly rely on imports, including from Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia, a country that the US regards as unstable and which could even turn hostile. But now the US controls Iraq, it need no longer kowtow to the oil-producers’ cartel, Opec. Instead, it will force the Iraqi government to withdraw from Opec and ramp up production to Saudi levels. As a result, the world will be awash with cheap oil and the ailing US economy will receive an almighty boost. Moreover, America will have turned the tables on the Arab world and other leading oil producers such as Russia, which will suddenly find their own economies at the mercy of the US.
British and European antiwar protesters will be familiar with these arguments.
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