(EDITORIAL) The U.S. Director of Economic Operations in the Middle East has warned that oil interests could well precipitate another war. Says he: “Wars in the past have had less reason to get under way than what is inherent in this situation”. The open charges and counter-charges made by America, Britain and Russia concerning exploitation of the oil resources of Iran have not been robbed of their dangerous potentialities. In Saudi Arabia, the United States which stole a march over Britain by signing up concessions from the visiting Saudi Arabian Princes, intimated in no ambiguous terms that American Imperialism is in the offing.

The excuse offered for seeking to corner Middle East oil has been that the United States, faced with dwindling production, had to adopt such safeguards for Allied war transport. The fact that the statistics of U.S. oil production did not betray any great falling off negatived the contention, while the fact that the new oil wells in the Middle East would take years for their exploitation was conveniently ignored… [T]he Middle East besides its present supplies could supply Europe and, perhaps, the U.S. … National and international claims for oil may well threaten to set the world ablaze once again.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2020