Why Bush Adopted the Obama Policy for Iran

Juan Cole, Salon.com [excerpt]

 The U.S.
has therefore simultaneously been interfering with the availability of cheap
petroleum products globally and making the case for military action against Iran less
compelling. Both the U.S.
and its European allies know that the negative fallout from a war could be
immense. Its effect on the world oil supply would be catastrophic. Iran's perennial threats to close the Strait of
Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf in the
event that it is attacked have to be taken especially seriously when oil
supplies are as tight as they are now. Some 40 percent of the world's petroleum
flows through that choke point, and any significant interruption of supply
under today's conditions could send prices skyrocketing so far as to threaten
the world with another Great Depression. In short, Iran is far more powerful when
petroleum is $127 a barrel than when it is $25 a barrel, and that power makes
it more prudent to negotiate with it than to rattle sabers. The opening to Iran was not a
victory of the realists, but of realism. That in the aftermath, Bush's Iran
policy looks more like that of Barack Obama than that of John McCain, is just
an indication that Obama is more realistic about the increasing constraints on
U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle Eastern oil states than is McCain.