Iran, always interested in wreaking havoc, has now made it very difficult to ship oil through the Strait of Hormuz. A significant amount of the world’s oil flows through this dangerous place. Iran has always held the world hostage by threatening to block the Straits or to attack shipping.

The problem is the world’s dependency on Arab oil and particularly shipping it through always dangerous waters.

My trailblazing study entitled, “The Triple Alliance of Power” examined the relationship between oil companies, governments, and the end user.  This seminal work provided many insights which are extremely relevant today.

The United States, when it first began to drill for oil in the early 1900s, created tariffs to limit the import of oil and eventually designed an oil import quota. The idea was to prevent the United States from becoming dependent on oil, particularly Arab oil.

Much foreign policy of the United States has been based upon obtaining oil. The United States, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, sidled up to Arab sheiks of every kind and description to create new countries for them. These new countries were then intended to liberally supply oil to the United Kingdom and the United States. It is for this reason that Jordan was given to the Hashemite princes, Saudia Arabia to the Saudi family, Iran to the Persians, and so on.

World War II was, in part, a battle over who would be able to obtain oil. The Nazis courted the Arabs successfully, while the Jews in........

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