” . . . on July 26th 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced that thence forward, it was illegal for any US company to sell oil or scrap metal to any Japanese buyer, and ordered all Japanese assets in the US to be frozen. In the words of Samuel E Morison, a noted naval historian who was acquainted with FDR and who wrote his 13-volume history of the Navy in WW-II with FDR’s full approval, “war was then inevitable.”

. . . From July 26th 1941, the REAL “day of infamy”, there was no possibility that the Japanese government would not very soon attack; for in that one stroke FDR had cut off its most vital supplies AND prevented it buying them anywhere else. THAT was the provocation that preceded Pearl Harbor. That was how FDR started WW-II. ”

Whether or not one agrees with the author’s conclusion, it is a fact that the US government put Japan “between a rock and a hard place” six months before Pearl Harbor, and that any clear thinker in possession of the basic facts about the Japanese economy should have been able to see it.

Fast forward to today. The UN Security Council has just slapped sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, the removal of which can be prevented–indefinitely–by the US veto in the Security Council.

Iran has been essentially frozen out of the Western (i.e. commercial) Oil &Gas industry for decades by the US government’s post-Hostage Crisis sanctions. Now, China and Russia (which had no trouble supplying Iran while ignoring US sanctions) will be hard pressed to ignore the Security Council’s sanctions–especially since they both voted for them.

I don’t know what FDR was thinking would happen in 1941. I’m not sure what the Security Council thinks will happen now.

It’s tempting to say that Iran appears to have been put “between Iraq and a hard place” but not only would the pun be painful, the analogy is scary . . .

I agree, indeed shoring up one’s regime by focusing on an external threat, real or no, is so common a strategy that I suppose I took it for granted.

My point though, would be that such a strategy has no long term viability, because, as you point out, it does nothing to remedy their internal structural problems.

So to reframe my earlier question, what should we be doing to contain such agressiveness in the short term, while at the same time encouraging reform in the long?

I don’t claim to have a clear answer to that question, but I believe it to be the correct one to ask.

Or the third possibility — that the regime will try to avoid both outcomes via hostile actions regionally.

Although we’ve heard their president yammer on ad nauseum about destroying Israel, that won’t fix their economy. For that matter, supplying terrorists (the other commonly-held reason advanced for aggressively confronting Iran) won’t fix it, either.

As PK says, Iraq’s infrastructure is also a mess.

So what, then, do they have in mind?

10 year of santions imposed on Sadam’s government followed by 3 years of war has not done a lot to make Iraq’s oil production infrastructure anything to risk going to war over. The Iranians are mostly Shites, but they are also Persians. The Iraqis wouldn’t not accept them with welcoming arms. I doubt they would find Iraq to be profitable place to conquer and hold. In fact it would probably turn out to be as much of a drain for them as it is for the United States.

I agree with Paul that it would be effective to replace our “unfriendly” suppliers with an alternative… and yes, efficiency factors in (as it does in peak oil debate, too). Ultimately, however, the best solution is energy independence, and diverse sources at that.

Assuming these economic reports to be correct (anybody have anything contrary?), the odds are probably very high that what Holly suggested, or something very similar, are what Iran has in mind. But Iran won’t be the only country who will go this way.

Key paragraph:

“They need to invest $2.5bn (£1.28bn) a year just to stand still and they’re not doing it because it’s politically easier to spend the money on social welfare and the army than to wait four to six years for a return on investment,” he said.

Iran is doing what a lot of authoritarian, yet oil rich regimes like to do (c.f. Venezuela, Russia), they’re using their oil money to prop up their otherwise untenable regimes by buying off the local populace and building their military.

Neither of these strategies can continue indefinitely (as the article points out) without serious investment.

But at the same time diverting funds away from the military and social programs would undermine their regime.

At some point the government will either open itself to reform as a way of survival, or collapse under its own dead weight.

It seems to me prudent policy to do whatever we can to encourage the former, as the chaos engendered by the latter prospect will truly benefit no-one.

This may be the single most effective policy for promoting a more flexible and effective foreign policy in the East.

“They cannot afford to carry out their threats to shut off oil supplies,” he said. “There is no oil weapon, it’s just a bluff.”

and:

Iran’s oil exports are plummeting at 10pc a year on lack of investment and could be exhausted within a decade, depriving the world economy of its second-biggest source of crude supplies.

Seems to me that stopping the oil isn’t a weapon, it’s a promise. Whether the oil isn’t availbale because Iran stopped exporting it, or the oil isn’t available because Iran can’t produce it, the oil isn’t available. Either way, we don’t have the oil. Bad for Iran (no revenue), Bad for us (no feeding the addiction)

A recent post on the same topic.