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Iran Oil: The New Middle East Challenge to America

Iran Oil: The New Middle East Challenge to America
By Roger Howard

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The US sees itself as being locked into a confrontation with Iran, its number one enemy since the invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. But, as Roger Howard argues in this compelling and provocative new book, by attempting to isolate Iran, the US may in fact be undermining its own power. For if the US forces the rest of the world to choose between Iran and America, Iran has a trump card to play: some of the largest deposits of gas and petroleum on the planet. With global energy demands at an all-time high and supplies becoming increasingly inaccessible, Iran’s oil and gas have already started to lure former US allies such as Pakistan and India away from American influence. Over the next decade, Iran’s energy supplies look set to radically reformulate the security and diplomatic relationships of Asia and the Middle East. Furthermore, because of US trade embargoes on Iran, it is only the US’s rivals, such as China, who are able to fully exploit Iran’s natural resources, thus powering a new alliance of countries which will act as a counterweight to US global power. By pursuing such a hostile agenda to a country with so much petro-clout, America is, according to Howard, writing its obituary as the world’s only superpower.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #1588885 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-01-09
  • Released on: 2007-01-09
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 272 pages

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Mr Howard has outlined a strategy for dealing with Iran that should be closely read and considered in the corridors of power in Washington DC." - Ian Jackson, Contemporary Review

About the Author

Roger Howard is a freelance journalist specialising in defence and energy issues in the Middle East. He is a contributor to The New Statesman and Spectator magazines, Middle East International and Jane's Intelligence Review.

Customer Reviews

Determined ignorance and spiteful anti-Americanism...1
Intelligent, well-informed Europeans--especially but not only leftists--have an impressive ability to profoundly misunderstand the United States, as Patrick Clawson stated in the Middle East Quarterly. And the problem is not ignorance. Howard, who writes for such respectable British organs as the Guardian, the Spectator, and Jane's Intelligence Review, cites all the right sources and correctly characterizes U.S. interests and policies--only to dismiss them as laughably naive or profoundly stupid.

A nontrivial example is the way Howard views the Arab-Israeli dispute. He simply cannot understand why the United States cares about Israel's security. And he regards as axiomatic that Iran's material support to terrorist groups, "if it has ever really assumed such a role at all, is of highly peripheral importance to the Arab-Israeli dispute." Given that Hamas--which both the European Union and the United States list as a terrorist group--proclaims Iran as its principal funder and that the thousands of Katyusha and other rockets fired into Israel by Hezbollah were manufactured in and paid for by Iran, Howard's is quite a remarkable view.

Howard also gets his main argument wrong. He claims that U.S. policy toward Iran is driven by that country's oil resources rather than revolutionary Iran's threat to regional peace and international security. Never mind the minor detail that the United States has for more than a decade maintained economic sanctions that forbid American firms from taking up Tehran's offer to invest there. Nor does Howard understand why government control over oil in countries around the world represents a problem for U.S. interests: The difficulty is from artificially-induced shortages that drive up prices and create panics, not from the revenue governments take in by owning oil resources (the record suggests such governments could actually generate more revenue by collecting taxes from freely-operating international oil companies).

Also troubling is the readiness of people like Howard to dismiss anything the U.S. government supports even if it is something near and dear to their own value systems. Howard writes, "[P]olicymakers in Washington need to recognize that another government's domestic track record has no necessary bearing on the outside world, and that its behavior within its own borders is ultimately a matter on which only the nationals of that country are in a position to pass judgement." Never mind a raft of international human rights treaties; Howard is ready to proclaim a right to commit genocide if it allows him to criticize the U.S. government.

If only Iran Oil were an isolated example of determined ignorance and spiteful anti-Americanism. Unfortunately, it is representative of many such works, though better written and organized than most--characteristics which make its deep flaws all the more obvious.