FOR global energy geopolitics, March 20 is extremely significant, reminding us of two major events that shook this energy rich region. And the impact of the events were so horrendous that these could be felt to this day. It was on this day in 1951, more than six decades ago, that members of the Iranian parliament passed a bill introduced by the then Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq on the nationalization of the oil industry. And this heralded a chain of events – that changed the world and the region. And then it was exactly on this day, some five decades later, in 2003 to be exact - that Operation Shock and Awe was unleashed on Baghdad by the Bush regime. And both the events appear directly linked to global energy geopolitics, the lust for energy riches of the region and the reach of the global, imperial powers – to secure their interests – at any cost. A number of analysts now underline that the nationalization of Iran's oil industry was the main reason behind the 1953 joint CIA-MI6-sponsored coup d'état, codenamed Operation Ajax, which overthrew the democratically elected Mosaddeq government. Before the nationalization of Iran's oil industry, the British government, which controlled Iran's oil industry through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, reaped higher profits from Iran's oil resources than the Iranian government. And in similar vein, many today assert that the Iraq war was fought for Big Oil. Despite some denials, the common perception to this day remains that Iraq was invaded to exploit its energy riches. Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq's domestic oil industry was fully nationalized and closed to Western oil companies. A decade of war later, it is largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms. From ExxonMobil and Chevron to BP and Shell, the West's largest oil companies have set up shop in Iraq. So have a slew of American oil service companies, including Halliburton, the Texas-based firm Dick Cheney ran before becoming George W. Bush's running mate in 2000. For the first time in about 30 years, Western oil companies are exploring for and producing oil in Iraq from some of the world's largest oil fields and reaping enormous profit. In 1998, Kenneth Derr, then CEO of Chevron, said “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas-reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to.” Today it does. Oil was not the only goal of the Iraq War, but it was certainly the central one, asserts Antonia Juhasz. And he had reasons for this. All these years, top US military and political figures have attested to, in the years following the invasion. “Of course it's about oil; we can't really deny that,” said Gen. John Abizaid, former head of US Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq, in 2007. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan too agreed, writing in his memoir, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Then-senator and now Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the same in 2007: “People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are.” In a write-up carried in Newsweek, the Bush administration speechwriter David Frum suggested that Dick Cheney eyed Iraq oil and sought war in Iraq to gain control of the Middle Eastern nation's oil resources. Frum suggests that a strong motivating factor for the war was probably Cheney's eyeing of Iraq's oil reserves. In fact Frum also underlined of the close association between the maverick Ahmed Chalabi and Cheney. “In 2002, Chalabi joined the annual summer retreat of the American Enterprise Institute near Vail, Colorado. He and Cheney spent long hours together, contemplating the possibilities of a Western-oriented Iraq: an additional source of oil, an alternative to US dependency on an unstable-looking Saudi Arabia,” Frum added. In addition, Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, obtained Commerce Department papers from the Cheney energy task force that included a detailed map of Iraq's oil fields, terminals and pipelines, as well as a list titled “Foreign Suitors of Iraqi Oilfield Contracts”. The papers were dated as early as March 2001, two months before the Cheney energy task force announced its report on the Bush administration's future energy agenda. Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch's president, said he had no way of knowing why the task force was interested in that information. And hence, in wake of the huge potential that Iraq offered, as soon as the George W. Bush administration was inducted in the White House in 2001 for the first time, Juhasz emphasizes, the planning for a military invasion of Iraq got underway. Bush's first Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, said in 2004, “Already by February (2001), the talk was mostly about logistics. Not the why (to invade Iraq), but the how and how quickly.” An energy task force was set up under Cheney's stewardship to map out Washington future energy structure. In its final report in May 2001, a few months before the 911 attacks on US, the task force argued that Middle Eastern countries should be urged “to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment.” The State Department Future of Iraq Project's Oil and Energy Working Group on the other hand also met from February 2002 to April 2003 and agreed that Iraq “should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war.” The rest is all history. Yes, the Iraq War was a war for oil, and it was a war with losers: the Iraqi people and all those who spilled and lost blood so that Big Oil could come out ahead, argues Juhasz in very strong terms. Energy riches have more than often proven to be a curse for people, endowed with this resource. And hence during a debate in Qatar on a TV channel, when the majority of the audience present were asked to vote, in yes or no, for the resolution that ‘energy resources have proven to be a curse for this energy rich region,' the majority opted for yes. Indeed there were reasons for that. And who could portray it better, than the divided and battered Iraq of today!
