{"id":238,"date":"2007-02-02T06:10:13","date_gmt":"2007-02-02T11:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=238"},"modified":"2007-02-02T07:14:49","modified_gmt":"2007-02-02T12:14:49","slug":"friedmans-own-war-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=238","title":{"rendered":"Friedman’s Own War in Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"
In a column back in June 2003 en<\/title>In a column back in June 2003 entitled “<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2003\/US\/06\/04\/nyt.friedman\/\">Because We Could<\/a>,” Thomas Friedman conceded,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I have to admit that I’ve always been fighting my own war in Iraq.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In other words, Friedman had his own reasons for supporting a US invasion of Iraq but acknowledges that these reasons did not necessarily coincide with the reasons the Bush administration went to war.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing has changed as the Bush administration goes to work on Iran.\u00c2\u00a0 Thomas Friedman is fighting his own war in Iran.<\/p>\n<p>In most respects, Friedman’s war in Iran runs parallel to Cheney’s war, as it has in Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=230\">a previous post<\/a>, I suggested that Cheney’s Saudi allies might be preparing to launch an oil war on Iran by flooding the market and driving down the price of oil until the Iranian regime either cried uncle (as it seemingly did when the Saudis dropped the price of oil in the late 1980s under Reagan and the late 1990s under Clinton) or collapsed in the face of internal, populist unrest.<\/p>\n<p>Friedman is an ardent supporter of this strategy.\u00c2\u00a0 In his February 2, 2007 column–<a href=\"http:\/\/select.nytimes.com\/2007\/02\/02\/opinion\/02friedman.html?hp\">The Oil-Addicted Ayatollahs<\/a>–Friedman writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to focus on how the Soviet Union was killed, in part, by its \taddiction to oil, and on how we might get leverage with Iran, based on its \town addiction…<\/p>\n<p>By the early 1980s, though, oil prices had started to sink \u00e2\u20ac\u201d thanks in \tpart to conservation efforts by the U.S… Oil prices and production kept \tfalling as Mr. Gorbachev tried reforming communism, but by then it was too \tlate…<\/p>\n<p>In 2005, Bloomberg.com reported, Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s government earned $44.6 \tbillion from oil and spent $25 billion on subsidies \u00e2\u20ac\u201d for housing, jobs, \tfood and 34-cents-a-gallon gasoline \u00e2\u20ac\u201d to buy off interest groups. Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \tcurrent populist president has further increased the goods and services \tbeing subsidized.<\/p>\n<p>So <strong>if oil prices fall sharply again, Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s regime will have to take away \tmany benefits from many Iranians<\/strong>, as the Soviets had to do. <strong>For a \tregime already unpopular with many of its people, that could cause all kinds \tof problems and give rise to an Ayatollah Gorbachev. We know how that ends<\/strong>. \t\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Just look at the history of the Soviet Union,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Professor Mau said.<\/p>\n<p>In short, <strong>the best tool we have for curbing Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s influence is not \tcontainment or engagement, but getting the price of oil down<\/strong> in the long \tterm with conservation and an alternative-energy strategy. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exploit \tIran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s oil addiction by ending ours.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Friedman is not new to this line of thinking.\u00c2\u00a0 In an earlier column–“<a href=\"http:\/\/select.nytimes.com\/search\/restricted\/article?res=F30F10F634550C748EDDA00894DE404482\">Fill ‘Er Up Dictators<\/a>“–Friedman wrote:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Bring the price of oil down to $30 and guess what happens: All of Iran’s \tincome goes to subsidies. That would put a terrible strain on Ahmadinejad, \twho would have to reach out to the world for investment. <strong>Trust me, at $30 \ta barrel, the Holocaust isn’t a myth anymore<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I’m proposing that most of Friedman’s analysis is not <em>like<\/em> Cheney’s strategy.\u00c2\u00a0 It <em>is<\/em> Cheney’s strategy.<\/p>\n<p>With one exception: Friedman’s special function is to bring the liberals along by aligning the war on Iran to an environmental politics of conservation and alternative energy.\u00c2\u00a0 In this, Friedman is fighting his own war on Iran.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn’t conservation that brought down the price of oil in the 1980s or the 1990s.\u00c2\u00a0 And Cheney isn’t counting on the Green Party to hit the Iranians.\u00c2\u00a0 Cheney is counting on the House of Saud to <em>flood the oil market<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>There <em>is<\/em> a likely relationship between bringing the price of oil down and conservation.\u00c2\u00a0 An inverse relationship.<\/p>\n<p>High oil prices make all kinds of energy alternatives (including conservation) viable.\u00c2\u00a0 Cheap oil puts the shine back on the old gas guzzling SUV.<\/p>\n<p>Friedman knows that Cheney’s effort to hit the Iranians with low oil prices–the “real” war on Iran–will actually destroy any recent momentum toward energy efficiency, energy alternatives, and conservation.<\/p>\n<p>So Friedman veers off from the Cheney war to fight his own: combine low market prices for oil with high oil taxes on oil consumption.\u00c2\u00a0 From “Fill ‘Er Up Dictators”:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[W]e don’t want the price of gasoline to go down in America just when $3 \ta gallon has started to stimulate large investments in alternative \tenergies…<\/p>\n<p>[W]e still need to make sure, either with a gasoline tax or a tariff on \timported oil, that we keep the price at the pump at $3 or more — to \tstimulate various alternative energy programs, more conservation and a \tstructural shift by car buyers and makers to more fuel-efficient vehicles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You can propose an oil price crash to hurt Iran.\u00c2\u00a0 You can propose an oil price hike in the form of gasoline tax to support energy innovation.\u00c2\u00a0 But the two proposals run in opposite directions.<\/p>\n<p>Friedman’s very “real” foreign policy–the one that is closely aligned with Cheney’s foreign policy–demands a collapse in oil prices.\u00c2\u00a0 His fantasy oil policy demands the exact opposite.<\/p>\n<p>Friedman’s support for an oil price war on Iran will help rally liberal hawks for Cheney’s war and then leave them high and dry when Friedman is subsequently <em>shocked, shocked<\/em> to find that the whole affair leads to less conservation and less innovation because, alas, there was no political appetite–least of all from the White House–for his petroleum tax.<\/p>\n<p>If the Saudis drop the price of oil, it may or may not have the predicted consequences in Iran.\u00c2\u00a0 But it will certainly diminish the pressure for energy innovation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a column back in June 2003 enIn a column back in June 2003 entitled “Because We Could,” Thomas Friedman conceded, I have to admit that I’ve always been fighting my own war in Iraq. In other words, Friedman had his own reasons for supporting a US invasion of Iraq but acknowledges that these reasons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}