OPEC And Oil Production

OPEC recently declined Joseph Biden's request to increase oil production and in fact announced that oil output will be decreased. This brought dismay because fuel prices are still very high.

With electric cars on the horizon this move didn't seem to make sense. Making fuel more expensive will only push the world toward electric cars that much faster. We would think that OPEC would try to keep the world needing their oil for as long as possible.

But there is more to it than that. Oil, and it's price, has been used as a weapon before. The Soviet Union was the world's largest oil producer in the 1980s, but it had invaded the Moslem nation of Afghanistan. In the late 1980s OPEC pumped a vast amount of oil and the resulting drop in it's price is considered as a major factor in the decline of the Soviet Union.

A drop in fuel prices politically benefits whichever party is in power. The Democrats now hold the U.S. presidency but this is right before the crucial Midterm Elections. We know that Donald Trump was close to MBS, the Crown Prince and defacto ruler of Saudi Arabia. Could it be that the Republicans made a secret deal to hurt the Democrats in the Midterms?

Before deciding what you think, read the following about Ronald Reagan and the Iran Hostage Crisis. The late former president of Iran at the time of the Hostage Crisis, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, said that this was true.

RONALD REAGAN AND THE IRAN HOSTAGE CRISIS

Here is something that is just a little bit spooky. It has been added to the compound posting on this blog, "Investigations".

On November 4, 1979, Iranian demonstrators seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. After some of the staff were released, 52 hostages were held. The demand was that the former Shah, who had recently entered the U.S. for cancer treatment, be returned to Iran to face trial.

The hostage crisis would go on for 444 days. The event that triggered their ultimate release was the beginning of war between Iran and neighboring Iraq. With Iran actually being invaded the hostages were no longer needed as a rallying point for the revolution and those guarding the hostages were needed at the battlefront.

The Iran Hostage Crisis is almost universally believed to be what ruined the chances of reelection for U.S. President Jimmy Carter. He was defeated in the 1980 election by Ronald Reagan.

But if the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War was the catalyst for the release of the hostages, the mystery is why it took another four months for them to be released. The war began on September 22, 1980 and the hostages were released on January 20, 1981. The hostages were no longer needed as a rallying point and their guards were needed at the battlefront.

As it turns out the hostages were released right on America's Inauguration Day, January 20, 1981,. Almost as soon as new president Ronald Reagan had finished his inauguration speech came the announcement from Iran that the hostages were being released. Algeria had been mediating the crisis and the hostages were flown from Tehran on Algerian planes.

This aroused the suspicion of many people. The Iran-Iraq War began on September 22. America's election day, November 7, was well over a month away. But if the hostages were released before election day it would likely have saved the presidency of Jimmy Carter. The suspicion was that Ronald Reagan's people had somehow made a deal with those holding the hostages to hold them, not only until after election day but until after Reagan's Inauguration, to be sure that Jimmy Carter's Democrats didn't get any credit for getting them released.

The U.S. Congress conducted an investigation but didn't find anything to substantiate the suspicions.

But then the next thing we know the Reagan Administration was found to be secretly selling weapons to Iran, for use in it's long war with Iraq, and using the profits to assist the Contras in Nicaragua.

Doesn't it look like Reagan's people made a deal with the Iranians holding the hostages to keep them until after Reagan's Inauguration, and then Reagan would sell urgently-needed weapons to Iran for it's war with Iraq? During the time of the Shah America had supplied weapons to Iran and, now that diplomatic relations had been broken by the Hostage Crisis, Iran was short of weapons when the unexpected war with Iraq began.

Some might think that maybe the Iranians were mad at Jimmy Carter's Democrats, for allowing the exiled Shah into the country, but not Reagan's Republicans, and that is why the hostages were held until Reagan actually took office on Inauguration Day.

But that doesn't make sense because it was in the news that Jimmy Carter actually didn't want to admit the Shah to the U.S. for cancer treatment, thinking correctly that it would mean trouble. It was the Republicans who insisted that America must not abandon an "old friend", and got the Shah admitted. The U.S. Embassy in Tehran was seized soon afterward.

If there was a secret alliance between the Reagan Administration and Iran it didn't last. In 1987 there were naval clashes between the two in the Persian Gulf. 

But the scenario we have discussed here is just a little bit spooky, and still seems so after more than forty years.