For over half a century, OPEC has tyrannized the industrial world. Using threats of oil shortages or sky-high prices, OPEC members often agreed to cut back 70-80% of their capacities, Victor Davis Hanson reminds readers of American Greatness.
OPEC, no longer the powerhouse monopoly of the 1970s, today accounts for barely half the world’s exported oil. Meantime today, the US, the largest producer of oil and gas in history, is struggling to meet increased demand for American oil. And Venezuela, rebooted, has reached a seven-year high in its renewed output. With Maduro’s regime gone, the country promises faster escalation in oil output.
Even with Russia’s oil still sanctioned, it has started to appear on the world markets. The Kremlin has upped exports by a quarter-million barrels per day.
As VDH notes, “Add it all up, and Iran’s 1.5–2 million barrels may not be all that missed, as the world price may fall by summer—regardless of Iran’s status.”
Redefining the Middle East is a combination of a neutered Iran and a foolish targeting of the Gulf nations.
How odd for Arab nations to be urging the US to continue bombing Middle Eastern nations. The Arab nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates), however, are frantically asking America to end the nearby Iranian theocracy for good.
The Gulf states were hit by six times as many Iranian rockets and drones as Israel. By itself, the Jewish state poses no threat to Persian Gulf exporters.
What we are seeing is a more realistic, less ideological Gulf council that is beginning to accept the fact that in the Middle East, Israel alone has the combat aircraft, expertise, and experience to strike Iran and deter it from attacking moderate Arab governments.
Arising is the specter is the new de facto alliance of mutual advantage between Israel and much of the Arab world, one that would isolate Iran, along with Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
If the previous catalyst for the Abraham Accords détente was American pressure, it may soon become Arab self-interest.
In Need of Cash
Cash is in short supply for Iran’s three terrorist cabals. One wonders, in a post-war Iran, if Iran will be able to fund billions of dollars subsidizing terrorists that increasingly have little support in the Arab world?
VDH asks, will a destitute Iran be able to replace its half-century-long, half-trillion-dollar investment in its military-industrial complex, now in ruins?
OPEC, Not the Only Loser.
Having previously lost its Syrian proxy, Russia is now effectively cut off from the Middle East with the loss of its client Iran, a separation that could become permanent should theocracy fall.
Moscow, trapped in a four-year quagmire in Ukraine, has on its hands dead and wounded approaching two million. Its economy is on the brink of depression, continues VDH.
Putin’s problems are endless. His nation, in terms of landmass, is the largest in the world, but the population has shriveled to 145 million from 290 million people due to aging and demographics. Putin may be more inclined to seek détente with the West when he considers that large countries have abundant natural resources and relatively small, diminishing populations draw the attention of a “nearby rapacious China.”
China, under American pressure in Panama and having lost much of its influence with oil-rich Venezuela, is scrambling in vain to find new oil producers desperate to unload their sanctioned oil… China is as dependent on foreign sources of energy as the US is self-sufficient.
China will continue keeping its eye on Taiwan. American naval and aerial prowess will continue to thwart her, just as China has been disappointed by the inability of the Russian army to overrun a much smaller and less well-armed Ukraine.
Will China absorb these lessons and rethink the viability of sending an amphibious fleet across some 110 miles of open sea and then landing hundreds of thousands of People’s Liberation Army soldiers on the beaches of Taiwan—amid skies full of drones and missiles and a sea of maritime drone ships and submarines?
Europe was also a big loser due to the war.
The temporary closing of the Strait of Hormuz reminded the oil-dependent European Union that its radical green agenda was unsustainable. The continent retains a desperate need to find safe and reliable exporters of affordable fossil fuels.
As VDH notes, many NATO members—Spain, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom in particular—will regret their loud opposition to allowing the US to stealthily use their airspace and joint NATO bases.
Even though many Europeans despise Trump, they still need America’s might and military protection.
Yes, many European hearts want to restrain/weaken the Trump-led Americans, notes VDH.
But their heads told them that the American-guided demise of the Iranian theocracy meant fewer existential threats to Europe from the Middle East, fewer violent Arab clients and proxies in the region, and fewer subsidized terrorists in their own backyards.
