War in the Middle East Is As American As Apple Pie

On Feb. 28 of this year, the United States and Israel joined forces to attack Iran—a country with one of the largest crude oil reserves in the world. The strike killed their head of state and other top government officials.

Two weeks later, the U.S. carried out another strike on Iran’s oil hub, hitting military assets while sparing the petroleum infrastructure.

Iran so far has retaliated by attacking U.S. property throughout the Middle East and infrastructure in nearby Gulf states. 

President Donald J. Trump and others in the executive branch claim the military actions were to prevent Iran from expanding their nuclear arsenal by destroying their resources. However, many question where the motivation truly lies. 

Is the U.S. simply interested in Iran’s so-called “liquid gold”?

The United States has long been a participating player in Iranian history. In 1953, the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, was overthrown in a coup supported by the U. S. and the United Kingdom, mainly driven by oil interests.

 In 1979, the Islamic Revolution led Iran to become a republic, solidifying anti-western sentiment. 

 As the current conflict escalates, oil trade has been paused and gas and energy prices in the United States are rising. In response, Russian oil trade is now on the table to help supply the U.S. with oil in the short-run.

While the Trump administration has not declared an official interest in seizing Iran’s oil production, Trump claims that it’s not a far-fetched possibility.

That raises a familiar question: could this conflict become another Iraq or Venezuela?

In 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq, claiming they possessed weapons of mass destruction and government ties to Al-Qaeda—the extremist terrorist group responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, was toppled from power and the west gained easier access to Iraqi oil. 

The Iraq war is now widely remembered as a failure, founded on false claims and lacking international support. 

That also happened in Venezuela this year when the U.S. led military attacks without international consensus. Since then, the U.S. has received more than 50 million barrels of oil from Venezuela.

In all these “oil states’ we see a pattern: a U.S. invasion justified with overthrowing an authoritarian government, resulting in increased accessibility to natural resources.

The Iran conflict now follows this pattern, with a U.S. air strike killing hundreds of schoolchildren.

How many lives must be lost and billions of dollars spent in warfare investment to stop this cycle of intervening in other countries to fulfill economic or political interests?