Empire Redux

May I suggest a fairly obvious rationale for King George's threats to invade Iran:

The Iranian situation is particularly troubling, as the possibility of an attack on Iran by Western powers looms due to their alleged nuclear weapons ambitions. Such an attack could create serious oil supply disruptions, because Iran sits on the eastern flank of the Straits of Hormuz, the channel in which almost all of the oil from the Persian Gulf flows through on tankers to industrialized nations.

Potential supply problems for a commodity bring the speculators out like vulchers on a corpse.

Recently, there has been an increasing amount of speculation on the oil market, therefore the increase in price could be partially due to this oil speculation extending into the long term.

Which is why we in East Texas are practically spraying our pants from the joy of it all...

Oil prices reached a new high for the year during a volatile session Friday, driven by tensions with oil-producing Iran and expectations of continued ...

But, gol-dangit, there's always a catch as those fancy pants liberals at The New Yorker point out: by driving up the price of oil, US policy is helping to prop up Ahmadinejad and strengthen Iran's abilities to finance a nuclear weapons program. Dang.