The 2026 attack on Iran is the latest in the series of “oil-bomb” wars. It fits into an American doctrine: Nations that have oil cannot make a nuclear bomb or a weapon of mass destruction (WMD). A similar analogy applies to “oil-dollar wedlock”: Nations that own oil cannot divorce the dollar. Most wars over the last few decades have been shaped by these principles. The third slant, discernibly, is radicalism that the US has been faced with for decades. Iran has been on the US’s negative list on many of these counts.

The global economy runs on oil, and for five decades, this has overwhelmingly been run on the US dollar. This arrangement is known as the petrodollar system, i.e., pricing of oil exclusively in dollars in exchange for military protection and arms sales. The result was an “exorbitant privilege” for Washington, with perpetual demand for dollars. When any major oil-producing State challenges this system or settles oil sales in gold or other currencies, it creates existential fault-lines. Historically, these fault-lines are often resolved through military pressure and regime change. The military pressure would get checkmated should the defending regime possess a nuclear weapon — such is the case with Russia.

The petrodollar system’s origin lies in the collapse of Bretton Woods. After then US President Richard Nixon ended dollar-gold convertibility in 1971, the dollar needed a new anchor. Oil provided this. By 1974, Saudi oil was priced and settled in dollars, and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) largely followed this. Petrodollars........

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