‘Fossil-fuel imperialism’: Trump’s hankering for Iranian oil runs deep

Donald Trump said this past weekend he wants to “take the oil in Iran” by seizing control of a key export hub, echoing a refrain he has returned to for over a decade.
It’s a sign of his disregard for international law and belief in “fossil-fuel imperialism”, experts say.
“Trump truly believes that the US is entitled to whatever resource it so desires,” said Patrick Bigger, co-director of the Transition Security Project, a research initiative focused on the climate and geopolitical concerns of militarization. “It’s a real ‘might-makes-right’ logic that is both abhorrent and spectacularly miscalculated.”
Trump is due to provide an update on the Iran war on Wednesday. On Tuesday, he said the conflict could end within weeks, leading the stock market to soar in anticipation of the de-escalation.
But Iran has said it would need guarantees against future attacks to halt its counteroffensive. And for now the war is continuing. Iran attacked a fully loaded crude oil tanker anchored at Dubai port on Monday. And earlier on Monday, the president said that if the strategically crucial strait of Hormuz were not “immediately” reopened and a peace deal not reached “shortly”, the US planned on “blowing up and completely obliterating” Iran’s energy infrastructure. (Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz to most commercial traffic following the outbreak of war in late February.)
That includes Kharg Island – the five-mile strip through which 90% of Iran’s oil is exported – as well as its electric generating plants and oilwells.
The previous day, Trump told the Financial Times that he wanted US forces to take over Kharg Island and the oil it houses.
“To be honest with you, my favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran,” he said, “but some stupid people back in the US say: ‘Why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people.”
With his Sunday statement, Trump “completely discredited” his war on Iran, said Amir Handjani, an energy lawyer and resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a thinktank promoting military restraint and diplomacy.
“It undermines all of the other reasons Trump has given for waging this war, and makes it look like what everyone always suspects when the US engages in military confrontation, which is a play for natural resources,” said Handjani, who is also a partner at the communications firm Karv Global.
Trump has voiced interest in seizing that very same export hub for decades, Handjani noted. In a 1988 interview while in the UK to promote his book The Art of the Deal, he told the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee that if he ever became president, he would be “harsh on Iran”.
“I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it,” he said. “It’d be good for the world to take them on.”
It’s not just Iran whose oil Trump has called for the US to take. During his first presidential campaign, he repeatedly suggested that the Bush administration should have seized Iraq’s oil to “reimburse” itself for the costs of the conflict.
Handjani said: “It was an asinine thing to say, because it’s not like the Iraqi people said to the US: please come and invade us and overthrow our government … we’ll repay you with our oil.”
Upon entering the White House, he laid out a similar approach when it came to Syria, saying that since the US had intervened in the region, it had rights to the nation’s oil and suggesting Exxon Mobil could lead the effort to take over those resources. And late last year, as he intensified his campaign against the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, he suggested oil seized from the country could be treated as a US asset, telling reporters: “Maybe we will sell it, maybe we will keep it, maybe we’ll use it in the strategic reserves.”
Waging war to obtain another country’s national resources is also illegal, said Handjani.
“There is no legal framework for going to war to take the natural resources of sovereign countries,” he said. “There is no rubric under international law and under the rules of war that allow for that.”
Kharg Island
Actually taking over Kharg Island, or launching a full-scale attack on it, would not be easy. That’s particularly true because Iranian missiles have rendered US bases in the region inoperable.
Marines would probably have to parachute into the region to enter, and upon doing so would be in the line of heavy fire. And because the move would also invite massive retaliation from Iran, it could easily destabilize the global economy, said Handjani.
“For Iran, I expect they’d say, you’ve taken now 90% of our exports offline? Well, we’re going to go level all of the export terminals and oil-producing facilities in the Arab countries, in the Persian Gulf,” he said.
In such a scenario, the price of oil could “easily go to $200 or $300 a barrel”, said Handjani, as huge volumes of global oil and gas are taken offline for years.
“We would be in a brave new world where the ramifications are unthinkable,” he said. “But you have to take the prospect of him doing this seriously, because he’s been acting erratically.”
The escalating conflict has already killed thousands of people, while setting off the largest-ever disruption to global energy supplies.
While people are suffering amid the war and resulting fuel price shocks, fossil fuel companies – such as those who furnished Trump with record donations on the campaign trail – are seeing handsome windfall profits, said Bigger.
“The longer that oil prices stay elevated, the more the oil majors stand to benefit,” he said. “And we’re already seeing is that [the war] is being used as justification to open up more US drilling, so regardless of the success of taking Iranian oil, what we’re likely to see is the exploitation of oil resources because it’s currently profitable to drill.”
That expanded extraction will lock the world into using more planet-warming fuel, making it harder to transition away from oil and gas. But Trump appears to have “no real concern with the future”, said Bigger.
Instead, Trump’s statements underscore his belief in “fossil-fuel imperialism”. Though the US has long been accused of projecting military force to secure resources it deems strategically useful, Trump is now “saying the quiet part out loud”, he said.
“He believes fossil fuels are a linchpin of his domestic industrial strategy, and that whoever controls the oil controls the world,” he said. “And he believes in using extremely hostile tools to blow up the international order to get what he wants.”