Committing the Reserves

I must be drinking the speculation kool-aid or something. But one aspect of blogging for me is looking at what we should be doing if we are going to carry out a specific mission.

And if we are going to hit Iran, the major threat that can't be dealt with by our military is the oil weapon. Iran probably counts on the threat of cutting off oil exports to stay our hand. So with that in mind, I'd want to prepare for the complete loss of Iranian oil exports for the time needed to take down Iran. My question is, have we been doing exactly this for the last couple years or so?

Consider that despite high prices that are supposedly the result of insufficient supply to meet demand that our total oil stocks are at a 8-year high. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve and private stockpiles in the United States have about 118 days of oil imports. By international agreement, signatories are supposed to have 90 days of imports on hand, so other leading countries should have similar reserves.

So what about the global posture? I know that supply is not meeting demand, but sometimes I get suspicious and wonder if the tremendous increase in prices the last three years come from a whole lot of nations and companies increasing their supplies of oil just in case an Iran-sized source of oil dried up for a short time.

Could we have warned our friends that they'd best be prepared to ride out an attack on Iran that cuts off oil supplies? Could this be part of the bargain that let the Europeans try diplomacy before supporting our more direct "cowboyish" methods?

And would we really just assume the mullahs will take the attack and then, after a short period of halting export, resume supplying oil to the market?

The logic of the situation seems to demand regime change in Iran even though on the surface there is no near-term prospect of this happening. If we are preparing oil reserves to flood the market to counter the loss of Iran's exports, we can't let the mullah regime survive. We can't stockpile enough oil to make up for a year-long decision by the mullahs to strike back by halting all oil exports. Even if it cripples Iran they may believe someone in the West will break before they do.

It takes 13 days from a presidential decision to send oil from the SPR to the market. The president recently halted deposits into the SPR (announced April 25). Could the same order have started the thirteen-day process? If so, we'd probably take action before that output started to avoid telegraphing our intent. If issued the day of the announcement, day 13 is Monday, May 8th. But this timing speculation is separate from the bigger picture of whether we are stockpiling oil in order to deal with Iran.

In a related matter that the SPR page did not answer and which a quick Google search did not answer, can oil be deposited and withdrawn from the SPR at the same time? That is, is a decision to halt deposits necessary to begin withdrawals? In this case, this order would not trigger the 13-day period but it would clear the decks to start the release process at some point. I'll look some more as time allows.

I keep hoping that the administration is planning better than it lets on (and better than critics charge) and that we will not have to take the risk of an aerial campaign alone against Iran's nuclear facilities. I keep hoping that regime change is the method we are pursuing and that military options are below plans for regime change in the near future.

So will it be a Tehran Spring?