The Security Council & Iran: Here's a problem

This headline from Reuters Tuesday explains why the Security Council won't be able to threaten Iran very effectively: "World can't afford to lose Iran's oil-US EIA."

A disruption in Iran's crude oil exports because of a dispute over that country's nuclear program would further crimp the already tight global oil market and lead to higher petroleum prices, the head of the U.S. Energy Information Administration warned on Tuesday.

"The market is so tightly balanced, clearly, we can't afford to lose a large supply of crude to the market," EIA chief Guy Caruso told Reuters in an interview.

Sure, I'd prefer economic sanctions to war, but it is really difficult to imagine effective sanctions that wouldn't limit purchases of Iranian oil -- and it's even more difficult to imagine the west limiting the oil market right now.

This past summer, it was widely reported that Iran was a decade away from going nuclear.

Why the rush to confront Iran now? AP's Amy Teibel, January 13:

Israeli officials think Tehran is closer to the "point of no return" in developing weapons than Western countries do, arguing that point is not when Iran might have a bomb, but when it might have the technology to produce the fissile component of nuclear warheads.

Hmmm.

What about nuclear deterrence?


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