It Really IS About Oil

Certainly one of the great ironies of our current military escapade is how Iraq and Iran are cozying up philosophically and economically, if not necessarily militarily, given how much the US backed Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. There was remarkably little US coverage of Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's visit to Iran and apology for Saddam's war crimes (the New York Times really buried it; scroll down to the last few paragraphs). And, outside of a few trade publications, there has been very little coverage here of three new pipelines to connect Iraqi oil with Iranian refineries and ports. Blood for oil? It's Iran that will reap the profits.

Juan Cole outlines how Iran is the victor of the war in Iraq in an excellent story in Salon.

The Iranians hold a powerful hand in the Iraqi poker game. They have geopolitical advantages, are flush with petroleum profits because of the high price of oil, and have much to offer their new Shiite Iraqi partners. Their long alliance with Iraqi president Jalal Talabani gives them Kurdish support as well. Bush's invasion removed the most powerful and dangerous regional enemy of Iran, Saddam Hussein, from power. In its aftermath, the religious Shiites came to power at the ballot box in Iraq, bestowing on Tehran firm allies in Baghdad for the first time since the 1950s. And in a historic irony, Iran's most dangerous enemy of all, the United States, invaded Iran's neighbor with an eye to eventually toppling the Tehran regime -- but succeeded only in defeating itself.