Last Friday, I wrote:
If the situation with Iran cools off, expect oil prices to fall. If it heats up, expect them to keep on rising. My prediction: the situation with Iran will be resolved in the next few days, and oil prices will head back towards $60 per barrel again.
Too bad I didn't put my money where my mouth was on that one, because it turns out that's exactly what has happened:
Crude oil plunged below $64 a barrel in New York after Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that he will release 15 seized Britons for the prophet Muhammad's birthday, easing concern of a conflict in the Persian Gulf.[..]
Crude oil for May delivery fell 83 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $63.81 a barrel at 9:38 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures touched $68.09 a barrel on March 27, the highest since Sept. 6...
Maybe I should quit political blogging and go into energy consulting? Maybe put my 17+ years working on international energy markets to use? Yeah, but Virginia politics is so much more fun! Ha. :)
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he was willing to make a "gift" to Britain, but he also honored naval commanders who captured the 15 in the northern Gulf.
You could make a real killing on wall-street if you wanted
I am a long-term investor and view short term investing almost like gambling
I will say this though, if you believe the hurricane forecast once oil hits 60 it would be a good idea to buy again.
For the past week I've been listening in vain for public verbal signals from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the dog who is not barking. I've been waiting for Gates to provide some hints about the likely direction of events in the Middle East, especially regarding U.S. intentions toward Iran.
Today we may be seeing the results of Gates' handiwork. Yesterday Iranian Second Secretary Jalal Sharafi, who was kidnapped off the streets of Baghdad in early February, was released and was able to return to Iran. He was most probably kidnapped by an Iraqi elite commando unit working in close collaboration with a U.S. military component. Here is one of many relevant links about the kidnapping:
Today we read an announcement that the U.S. has agreed to allow the Iranians to have access to the five Iranian officials captured by the U.S. military in a raid on the Iranian consulate (or "liaison office") in Irbil on January 11th.
I find it hard to believe that someone of Secretary Gates' sophistication would have knowingly permitted such a kidnapping in Baghdad or such a raid in Irbil. Is it possible that Gates has now finally managed to bring under his control some kind of rogue U.S. military operation in Iraq, an operation that was bypassing him and perhaps was running through a separate command channel directly between Cheney's office and small U.S. military component in Iraq?
Today ABC (so caveat lector) is reporting that the U.S. has been encouraging anti-Iranian insurgents based in Pakistan's Baluchistan Province to conduct raids inside Iran. (Surely, no one in the region would accuse the U.S. of being a "state sponsor of terrorism" for promoting such activity?) The ABC report asserts that the U.S. was not providing funding for this operation, so the Administration saw no need to inform Congressional committees of the U.S. role. OK, so then exactly who was providing the funding? Did the Administration ask some anonymous donor to provide financial support on behalf of the U.S.?
Iran-Contra redux, anyone? Here lies yet another Bush/Cheney rock for Congress to look under.
Today we also see that Iranian President Ahmedinejad has announced the imminent release of the 15 British sailors and Marines captured in disputed territorial waters nearly two weeks ago. I expected the Iranians to release the British female soon and to hold the other 14 for a while longer as leverage to extract the five Iranian officials still being held by the U.S. Will those Iranian officials under U.S. detention now be released within the next few days?
It seems likely that Gates has not been talking in public for the past week because he has been too busy "doing" behind the scenes and in back channels. Secretary Rice flies and smiles. Secretary Gates works and does.
It is hard to believe that either Rice or the Bush White House had any positive role to play in this encouraging series of events. My guess is that Gates is working essentially by himself, with the expectation of political support from a Democratic Congress, to find a rational way out of the collapsing neocon box in the Middle East. He must be working 20x7, for he seems to be very much alone in the Bush Administration. I wonder whether he may have forged an alliance with CIA Director Michael Hayden, who may also inhabit the reality-based universe.
I hope that Gates is coordinating closely with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The adults may yet prevail.
I suspect you are right about Gates. Rice is not highly regarded by the inside folks. And Bush, well . . .
It's fascinating to try to put the little pieces together.
And apropos of nothing, I just discovered a video of Alanis Morisette doing her version of Black Eyed Peas My Humps
My strange musical tastes -- it's the first song I've ever liked from her
And we still have the return of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to look forward to next week. They will have no dearth of material stacked up.