Blood and Oil (documentary)

Excerpt:

KLARE: In the Persian Gulf, the Nixon Doctrine was focused specifically on Iran where the United States embraced the autocratic Shah of Iran to be our surrogate or proxy. And it was the Shah who was chosen to protect U.S. interest in the Gulf area.

NIXON: And now we come again to Tehran. And we see the progress that has occurred in those 19 years, under the enlightened leadership of Your Majesty.

KLARE: And we provided billions and billions of dollars to the Shah and to Iranian forces to protect the oil. And this surrogate strategy worked fine, until the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979. (Chanting)

NEWS ANCHOR: Suddenly Iran is no longer one of this country’s strongest and most dependable allies in the strategic Persian Gulf area.

KLARE: The autocratic Shah was replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini who adopted an anti-American stance. This produced tremendous panic in Washington because there were no proxies left to defend the oil.

NEWS REPORTER: Mr. President, the Persian Gulf is one of the great mineral treasures of the whole world. Most of Japan’s oil and an awful lot of Europe’s oil passes through there. The Shah really was the policeman of the Gulf and kept the oil flowing. Now the new civilian government says its not going to be the policeman of the Gulf anymore. What’s going to happen to this terribly, terribly important part of the world if there is no policeman?

KLARE: And so it was decided that the United States would have to take up this role itself and not rely any longer on surrogates to protect American interests in the Persian Gulf region.

JIMMY CARTER: Let our position be absolutely clear. An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America. (Applause) And such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary including military force.

KLARE: This was a radical step because for the first time it said explicitly that the protection of Middle Eastern Oil was a vital national security interest of the United States. Now the problem is at the time, the United States didn’t have any forces that were specifically earmarked for operations in the Persian Gulf area. And so Carter created the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force to act as an interim force.

CARTER: In the past, we have not had an adequate military presence in that region. Now we have two major carrier task forces. We have access to facilities in five different areas of that region and we’ve made it clear, that working with our allies and others, that we are prepared to address any foreseeable eventuality, which might interrupt commerce with that crucial area of the world. This I believe has ensured that our interests will be protected in the Persian Gulf region as we’ve done in the Middle East and throughout the world.

KLARE: And this became the nucleus for the Central Command.

CENTCOM

REAGAN: I am not frightened by what lies ahead. And I don’t believe the American people are frightened by what lies ahead.

KLARE: President Carter lost the election in 1980 and Ronald Reagan stepped in. And despite all of his criticism of Carter, Reagan took the initiatives of the Carter Doctrine and beefed them up even further.

REAGAN: Deterrence means simply this: making sure any adversary who thinks about attacking the United States or our allies, or our vital interests, concludes that the risks to him outweigh any potential gains. Once he understands that, he won’t attack.

KLARE: And among his first actions was to take the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force and make it even bigger, and it was he who converted it into the Central Command in 1983. The Central Command is a very recent addition to the roster of America’s unified commands. We’ve long had a European Command, a Pacific Command, a Southern Command in Latin America, but there was none in the Middle East, and this is where most of the world’s remaining oil is located. And so President Reagan created the Central Command to exercise control over American forces in that Middle part of the world.

REAGAN: As long as Saudi Arabia and the OPEC nations there in the East, and Saudi Arabia is the most important, provide the bulk of the energy that is needed to turn the wheels of industry in the Western world, there is no way that we can stand by and see that taken over by anyone who would shut off that oil.

KLARE: The original function of the Central Command, very clearly elaborated by the Reagan administration was primarily to protect the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf to the United States and markets around the world. That’s always been its primary focus. This is the period of the Iran-Iraq war, which broke out in 1980 and intensified in 1986 and 1987 when the Iranians started attacking Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. What Reagan did is say, ‘Okay, let us stick American flags on the stern of Kuwaiti oil tankers, which means it’s legitimate to protect them by the American Navy.’ And that’s exactly what happened.

NEWS REPORTER: After months of policy confusion and political debate, the U.S. Navy is poised today just outside the Persian Gulf to escort the first two Kuwaiti tankers past Iranian guns. The five warships to be used in the first leg have a mix of almost every weapon in the Navy’s arsenal.

KLARE: It was a clear use of military force, explicitly to protect the flow of oil. There was no other motive for this. There was no freedom at stake, no democracy at stake, no terrorism at stake. It was simply to keep the oil lanes open.

REAGAN: We remain deeply committed to supporting the self-defense of our friends in the Gulf, and to ensuring the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.

KLARE: This has always been the primary function of the Central Command - to protect the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf to the United States and its allies.

NEWS ANCHOR: We have some drama unfolding in the Middle East to report to you tonight. Diplomats in Kuwait are now saying that Iraqi troops have now crossed the border into Kuwait.

KLARE: When Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait, the first President Bush gave the Carter Doctrine its most extreme, most substantial implementation.

GEORGE H.W. BUSH: And it is about our own national security interests and ensuring the peace and stability of the entire world.

KLARE: When President Bush met with his advisors in Camp David on August 3rd and 4th the fear was that Saddam Hussein was within striking range of Saudi Arabia’s oil fields. And this created a panic situation in Washington.

H.W. BUSH: This will not stand. This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait. KLARE: And President Bush concluded at that moment that we had to act militarily.

H.W. BUSH: We have sent forces to defend Saudi Arabia. The integrity of Saudi Arabia, its freedom, are very, very important to the United States.

KLARE: What’s so interesting here is how clear it was, in August and September 1990, that oil was the trigger for U.S. intervention in the First Persian Gulf War.

H.W. BUSH: Our jobs, our way of life, our own freedom, and the freedom of friendly countries around the world would all suffer if control of the world’s great oil reserves fell into the hands of that one man, Saddam Hussein.

KLARE: But this aroused protests around the country, and polling data show that the public was firmly opposed to a war in the Middle East for oil. So over the course of the next few months, Bush changed his tack.

H.W. BUSH: Some people never get the word- the fight isn’t about oil.

KLARE: And he stopped talking about oil.

H.W. BUSH: I’m deeply concerned about Saddam’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Saddam Hussein systematically raped, pillaged and plundered a tiny nation.