The Devil We Know: Dealing With the New Iranian Superpower by Robert Baer

Author:Robert Baer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780307408679
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Published: 2011-01-25T02:45:28+00:00

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TOPPLING THE ARAB SHEIKHDOMS:

HOW IRAN PLANS TO SEIZE

THE PERSIAN GULF’S OIL

Iran has effectively annexed a third of Iraq and the bulk of its oil. It is tightening its control over three vital energy corridors: Afghanistan, the Strait of Hormuz, and Kurdistan. If that’s not enough to scare anyone who drives to work or heats his house in winter, Persian Gulf oil itself is now within Iran’s grasp.

The Gulf Arab sheikhdoms, and the oil that sloshes just under their sands, are vulnerable to military takeover. Iran is the overwhelmingly dominant military force in the Gulf, capable of quickly putting a million men in uniform. The next largest military, Saudi Arabia’s, is just a quarter of its size.

Iran’s army is combat-hardened, thanks to the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War; Saudi Arabia’s has never fought a war. The Saudis’ last engagement was during the 1990-91 Gulf War, when the Saudi soldiers threw down their rifles and ran. If it hadn’t been for the U.S. Marines, there would have been nothing standing between the Iraqi army and the Saudi capital of Riyadh. Even today, the only thing that stands between Iran and Riyadh is the United States.

In one scenario, Iran could provoke a war with Saudi Arabia, sending ground troops and paratroopers to take Riyadh within forty-eight hours. And it would take even less time for Iran to seize Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, which are particularly vulnerable from the sea. The United States would massively retaliate from the air, and ultimately destroy the Iranian attacking force. But the global consequences would be catastrophic: The Iranians could be counted on to instantly sabotage Saudi oil facilities, taking 9 to 10 million barrels of oil a day — nearly all of Saudi Arabia’s production — off world markets, spiking oil prices well beyond global economic tolerances, leading to a worldwide depression. It would take at least two years to bring Saudi production back onstream.

The only real deterrence to an Iranian attack, then, is American ground forces. But the American military is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. There simply aren’t an additional 200,000-300,000 troops available to protect Saudi Arabia or its oil fields, at least not without bringing back the draft and taking two years to train and equip the new troops. And even if this were to happen, with the Middle East already costing us trillions, spending trillions more to defend Saudi Arabia would cripple the U.S. economy.

In December 2007, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cost of our occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan will reach $2.4 trillion over the next decade. A truly effective containment of Iran — retaking Iraq, disarming Hezbollah in Lebanon, protecting the Gulf Arabs and their oil — could easily double that. We’re talking about the money for the baby boomers’ retirement, the education of three generations of Americans, the price of converting to alternative energy sources. The United States would be spending the equivalent of what it cost Rome to maintain its empire, or Spain or Britain theirs — empires that financially drained their metropolitan centers and collapsed.

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