A War for Oil: Economist Michael Hudson on U.S. Quest to Control the World’s Oil Trade
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- Michael Hudsonfinancial analyst, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
We speak with economist Michael Hudson, who details how President Trump opted to attack Iran despite progress at indirect U.S.-Iran negotiations. “The whole reason that America has attacked Iran has nothing to do with its getting an atom bomb,” but instead the aim was U.S. control of oil, says Hudson. The Trump administration may have been after the ability to “turn off the power” to countries that don’t follow U.S. foreign policy, he says.
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
“The US/Israeli Attack Was to Prevent Peace Not Advance It.” That’s the headline of a new article in CounterPunch by the economist Michael Hudson, who details how President Trump opted to attack Iran despite progress made during last week’s U.S.-Iran negotiations in Geneva. In the piece, Hudson writes about the significance of these comments by Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, who appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation Friday, one day before the U.S. attack.
BADR ALBUSAIDI: If the ultimate objective is to ensure forever that Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb, I think we have cracked that problem through these negotiations by agreeing a very important breakthrough that has never been achieved anytime before.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by the economist Michael Hudson, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, distinguished research professor of economics at University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Thanks so much for being with us, Michael. I mean, it seems that the Oman foreign minister flew to Washington so he could directly address this issue, saying more progress had been made and that the deal was going to be one better than Obama’s. He didn’t trust President Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and as well as — he didn’t trust Kushner to convey the level of progress that had been made, so he spoke directly himself to the American people through the U.S. press. Your response?
MICHAEL HUDSON: The fact that progress was being made, and that Iran negotiators had agreed not to only — not to have an atom bomb, but to reduce their refined uranium, to shift the refined uranium outside of the country, and to submit to an unprecedented degree of oversight, made it urgent that the United States attack Iran immediately, because what happened was that after the Iranian negotiators went back to Iran, Khamenei and his religious leaders and the military leaders sat down to have a meeting to draft their reply accepting the U.S. demands.
But none of this was about an atom bomb to begin with. The whole reason that America has attacked Iran has nothing to do with its getting an atom bomb, because it wasn’t getting an atom bomb. The aim was to control Near Eastern oil by the United States. And General Petraeus, years ago, had outlined this whole plan in saying, “Well, we’re going to conquer seven Near Eastern countries, culminating in Iran.” Well, actually, the plans go way back to 1974, when OPEC quadrupled the prices, and the United States said, “Well, you can quadruple the prices, but we need to control the world’s oil trade, because oil is a chokepoint. Every country needs oil for its industry, for its transportation, for its electricity, to heat the home. And if we can control the world’s oil trade, then we can use that as an arm of U.S. diplomacy. And we don’t have to own the oil. We don’t have to overthrow the OPEC countries like we did the Iranian government in 1953 when they wanted to nationalize oil. You OPEC countries can nationalize your oil. You can take control of Aramco and the other countries. But you have to make an agreement that all of your profits and rents from the oil will be lent back to the United States, recycled in the United States, priced in dollars and invested in U.S. Treasury securities, U.S. bonds and U.S. stocks, so that the money, the vast dollar inflows from your oil exports, will all be part of the U.S. economy.”
I sat in on meetings in the White House in 1974 when this was discussed, because I had been the specialist at Chase Manhattan for the U.S. balance of payments and specifically for the oil industry. And from the very beginning, the U.S. foreign policy was based on if we can control the world’s oil trade, then we really have control of the world’s economy. But in order to do this, we have to prevent other countries from buying oil from countries not controlled by the United States — first by Iran after the shah was overthrown; then you can’t let them buy from Russia after 2022, so you had the sanctions against Russia and the destruction of the oil pipeline; then the sanctions against Venezuela to prevent countries from buying from Venezuela; and now back to Iran to prevent Iran from selling its oil to China. Eighty percent of Iran’s oil exports had gone to China.
So, the whole idea from the beginning was to consolidate the U.S. ability to control oil, and thereby to give Trump and the U.S. administration the ability to turn off the lights, to turn off the power, to turn off the electricity to other countries if they did not agree to follow U.S. foreign policy, to maintain sanctions against other oil countries, against Russia, China also and Iran, and follow the —
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Hudson, we’re going to continue this conversation and post it online at democracynow.org. Michael Hudson, economist, we’ll link to your article, “The US/Israeli Attack Was to Prevent Peace Not Advance It.” Michael Hudson, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends.
I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. I’ll be in Savannah, Georgia, on Saturday. Check our website at democracynow.org.
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