Is Iran crisis all about OPEC?

The British hostages. The tension between the US and Iran. Rumors of missle exchanges. The constant threats to wipe Israel off the map, and the US with her.

We’ve heard it almost endlessly, but no one’s been looking at a startling possibility: Could all of Ahmadinejad’s saber-rattling toward the West be more about OPEC than about Iran’s national sovereignty?

Follow the money. After enjoying hefty price-per-barrel profits last summer, the OPEC nations have been taking a bit of a bath once prices began to fall last fall. In the last month, though, prices have shot back up in the wake of tensions in the Middle East, most of them caused by Iran’s Ahmadinejad.

Money is about power, and it seems to Wonderful Pessimist that the latest saber-rattling is less about real tensions and more about power supply repair; in other words, Iran wants its power back, and rising gas prices accomplish that, so if you can create some tensions about Middle East peace and cause those prices to go back up, you get your power back.

It makes more sense than one might think, once you take a moment to ponder it.