Iran running out of oil the driving force behind Global Jihad?

From writer Spengler at Asia Times Online comes a very interesting proposal — that Iran could run out of oil “within only 10 years”. Now, this is a topic that’s never even run across my mind, so I figured it probably would come as a surprise to my readers, too.

Iran, I warned on September 13, 2005, is running short of oil and soldiers (Demographics and Iran’s imperial design). Its oil exports could fall to zero within only 10 years, according to new studies reviewed in the December 11 Business Week. Iran’s circumstances appear far more pressing than I believed a year ago, when the consensus estimate gave Iran another 20 years’ worth of oil exports. Apart from oil, Iran exports only dried fruit, pistachio nuts, carpets, caviar and, more recently, prostitutes (Jihads and whores, November 21).

Iran covets the oil reserves of southeastern Iraq, southern Azerbaijan, and northwestern Saudi Arabia. With 30% youth unemployment, 10% inflation, epidemic prostitution and drug addiction, Iran’s fraying social fabric depends on an oil-derived government dole. Within a generation it will have half as many men of military age, and four times as many pensioners. As currently configured, Iran faces economic and demographic collapse eventually. If, as Business Week reports, Iran’s oil exports are falling by one-seventh each year, the reckoning might come sooner rather than later. The theocratic regime is a wounded and dangerous beast, prone to hunt outside its own preserve.

Ok, Iran without oil is good news for the West, but now here’s the bad news in the opinion of Spengler (from his earlier article Demographics and Iran’s imperial design):

Apart from Iran, the population dynamics described above will lead to more rather than fewer terrorist demonstrations. A school of thought represented by Daniel Pipes, for example, holds that “terrorism obstructs the quiet work of political Islamism”, as Pipes wrote on August 3 in the New York Sun. “In tranquil times, organizations like the Muslim Council of Britain and the Council on American-Islamic Relations effectively go about their business, promoting their agenda to make Islam dominant and imposing dhimmitude (whereby non-Muslims accept Islamic superiority and Muslim privilege). Westerners generally respond like slowly boiled frogs are supposed to, not noticing a thing.”

Here I think Pipes is wrong; the Islamists have to strike quickly and decisively, not only to advance their cause in the West but also to consolidate their power in home countries where conditions will become unstable before long.

Here I must agree with Spengler. This would in fact explain much about the growing aggression and the long-range plans of Iran. If many nations in the Middle East feel that they cannot long survive the pinch of a lower oil production and the subsequent loss in revenue, then they would be making plans to do something to counteract this shortfall before it occurs.

I’ve already discussed my own feelings about the The Strategy of the Global Jihad and what Spengler surmises could very well be what’s fueling the rage and the jihad.

Think on it.