Will Iran Crisis push oil to $130?

[ECH1969]

Not a drop of oil from Iran reaches the nation's gas pumps. But escalating tensions about Iran's nuclear program are already being felt in oil and gas prices in the United States.

That's because even though the United States has banned oil imports from Iran since the 1979 Iranian revolution, some 4 million barrels of Iranian crude are shipped around the world each day, accounting for about 5 percent of global supply. That has an effect on prices everywhere, no matter how much or how little Iranian oil reaches U.S. refineries.

And the growing dispute over Iran's nuclear program is one key reason oil prices have jumped since late December back near $65 a barrel.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/07/news/international/iran_oil/?cnn=yes

[Atman]

1. Only if Bush's plans work out the way he wants!

He and Uncka Dick are down to their last gazillion dollars or so.

[laheina]

6. Don't you mean

a brazillion? (Ducks)

[Atman]

7. Isn't that the place with no blacks?

Or is she that DLC shill woman always appearing on CNN?

Good catch!

[rman]

2. then what caused pre-Dec05 $70+ oil prices?

[Avalux]

3. And who will make the profits?

Those running our government - so YES. Their objective is to drive the middle class of this country into poverty while they continue to make gobs and gobs of money. Once we're all destitute we can be rounded up and placed in domestic detention centers.

[liberal N proud]

4. If you think that bothers bu$h or his regime, think again

[LynnTheDem]

5. Iran's LEGAL nuclear program.

Ain't it strange how the US "msm" never mentions that part.

[kenny blankenship]

9. Anyway, whether the program is legal or not under old rules

is perhaps an obsolete question.

George W. Bush has singlehandedly obliterated the whole idea of international laws. Whether the standing of law can be restored after he goes (if he goes) is an open question. I'm sure most of the world would like to have the old system back, warts and all, but if the world's most powerful country continues its pattern of simply ignoring laws between nations or governing associations of world nations, and it continues to tear up already ratified treaties, and block the adoption of new ones, and it continues violates the first principles of the United Nations Charter, and Geneva Conventions, and other pillars of the old order of international law, then what is to bind all the other countries? There is no law.

[LynnTheDem]

10. No, bush has obliterated AMERICA'S whole idea of law period.

The rest of the world doesn't agree with bushworld. THANK GOD!

But then, bush has also obliterated everything decent about America; our reputation, our standing, our honesty & integrity & morality, our freedoms and rights, and our bankroll.

[kenny blankenship]

13. Um careful there--it will be under an argument of enforcing law that Bush

will attack Iran just as it was his pretext in invading Iraq. By subscribing yourself to the notion of international rule of law, while in fact nothing of the kind exists, you are pledging yourself to principles Bush will claim justifies--necessitates--a preemptive attack on Iran. Bush wants to execute a prisoner--and you load and hand him the revolver to do it. He mustn't pull the trigger you say, not yet, because certain conditions haven't yet been met. But you know as well as I that he will pull the trigger. He'll have done it before you can even finish telling him about those conditions.

Because no countervailing power exists in the world to check the military power of the United States, and the United States currently refuses to abide by international rule of law, it is sheer hypocrisy to speak of the rule of law anymore in an international context. It would be different if America were just another country like France. But America's power is the only power capable of enforcing "laws" among nations in typical cases, and in this case there is certainly no coalition ready and willing to bring us to justice. Actually it's worse than hypocrisy to speak of international law, it's abject naivete. It's a tactical error. Our subscribing to it, in the face of knowledge that "International Law" is only being used to excuse invasions, just makes Bush stronger. Law in an international sense only exists now as a verbal and imaginary figleaf for the raw pursuit of military empire. Regardless of how it started or how it may have been used in the past, that is what it is now. So better to call it what it is since appealing to the original intent of the legal order--namely to prevent and forbid war, to make aggressive wars a prosecutable act--has the reverse effect and actually encourages and facilitates aggressive wars. The Law of Nations, in the Bush era, is simply a conversion of murderous criminality into assumed, unquestionable authority. The truth is that United States under George Bush is at war implicitly with the whole world--implicitly since no country dares to stand up and be the first to declare explicitly that a state of world war exists.

The other countries don't believe an international system of law exists at this moment, either. If they did believe that law ruled, they would stand up and state the obvious fact that the United States is engaged in wholesale violations of the United Nations Charter. That the UN cowers instead and accomodates the invasion of Iraq, not endorsing the "use of force" on the one hand but on the other hand, not condemning a patently illegal war, nor the humanitarian disaster and civil war that is following in the wake of our armies in Iraq ought to tell you everything you need to know about "rule of law". It's over. It's 100% absent from the world. If it ever really existed it's surely dead now. Look there are no gray areas in the starting of war, legally speaking. Either the war was justified under the UN Charter or it was a massively illegal act--the international equivalent of Murder in the First Degree. So which was it? That's a question that cries out for an answer, and it's an either-or answer. The whole point of HAVING LAW in the first place is void if there is no answer to all-important questions like this one. And what is the answer? There is no answer. The UN says nothing. Not "we don't know". Not it's OK. Not it's illegal. It just says NOTHING AT ALL. The UN pisses its pants in silence. What exists now is the rule of the jungle.

You must examine the metaphor of law in an international context--what does law mean? It means set standards of conduct and that assumes the power to enforce standards and it assumes disinterested determinations of legality and illegality--that the standards being enforced are truly standards. Is there currently any enforcement? No, there is no enforcement. The United States was the premier enforcement power acting with other countries, with their consultation and assent or actual assistance. But now we are the premier outlaw nation, and we enforce only our will. WHERE is the enforcement to stop us? It does not exist. A state of lawlessness covers the world in our shadow. Where is the dispassionate evenhanded determination of legality? We now do to Iraq what Iraq did to Kuwait and the United Nations says nothing, but maintains an abject silence hoping only to avoid drawing the wrath of George Bush. No law currently exists--a global state of war has replaced it. It is worse than a state of lawless war. In this world war, no law is held to exist but laws mandating war, rape and murder. What exists is Unlaw, to protect criminals from victims and to keep innocent bystanders from meddling.

If it is ever brought to heel, America must be bound by a new order of international law, but it will not be for us to say what those laws shall be, just as German Nazis were not consulted in the Nuremburg Conventions nor in the drafting of the United Nations Charter.

[LynnTheDem]

14. enforcing WHAT LAW against Iran???

Iran is legally entitled to nuclear research & energy & that is a solid absolute FACT.

Iran has not broken any laws, sanctions, treaties, or resolutions.

[kenny blankenship]

15. Bush will say and already says that Iran is not pursuing peaceful uses

of atomic energy, and he will press the security council to sanction Iran. Without inspections of its atomic facilities Iran is "not in compliance with the Non Proliferation Treaty" and this will be blown up into something as outrageous as barbequeing babies and fomenting terrorism. Iran will violate the sanctions, as the sanctions will be created solely in order to be violated. Now other countries on the security council shouldn't give into Bush knowing what he's done in the past, but for various reasons ranging from the habit of taking bribes, and lingering delusions to pure fear of the United States they will knuckle under and give him 90% of what he asks for. The sanctions will be calculated to be humiliating and unacceptable or impossible to comply with fully, as in the previous case of Iraq. Even if by a miracle Iran fully complied, Bush will say they are not in compliance. Bush will then "enforce the sanctions" by attacking Iran, claiming by his actions that he's ensuring peace, by starting a war (this sometime was a paradox, but now the Bush era gives it proof). He will say a regime that has an atomic weapons program and refuses to comply with UN sanctions is ipso facto a threat to the security of the world and to the United States and its vital interests in the region. Now you have real war enabled by the fiction of law.
All it takes is a murdering madman in control of the United States.

[LynnTheDem]

16. bush can say the sky is purple with yellow polka dots.

And probably will, sooner or later.

Iran is not breaking any laws and that's just a fact.

That bush will ignore any and all facts is also a fact.

As you say, one murdering madman in control of the USA...

[harlinchi]

8. But Halliburton has benefitted all the same!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,126507,00.html

How was it okay for that company to be buying Iranian oil while Cheney was its leader? What kind of conflict of interest was it for Cheney to be advocating for the lifting of anti-Iranian sanctions? Why are rhetorical questions the only responses I can think of? How frustrated must I be?

[Coastie for Truth]

11. No matter what happens in Iraq - prices will go up

Read:

1. "The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century" by James Howard Kunstler (And, I am no fan of Kunstler's; I think is technologically and scientifically a dolt who holds us techno-geeks in utter disdain, and he is a closet Malthusian.)

2. "Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak" by Kenneth S. Deffeyes

3. "Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage" by Kenneth S. Deffeyes

4. "An Introduction to Economic Geology and Its Environmental Impact" by Anthony M. Evans (A very good book - assumes intelligence but no specific geological expertise)

5. "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy" by Matthew R. Simmons

6. "Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum" by Michael T. Klare

7. "Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict" by Michael T. Klare

8. DU: Environment and Energy Forum

9. DU: Peak Oil Group

Then go back and read PNAC's " Rebuilding America's Defenses"

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages - we are running out of cheap, easy to find and drill and refine, light, sweet crude oil -- and more and more people (India and China) are competing with us to buy it.

[lonestarnot]

12. up up and away!