Eighty-four years later, only the names and faces have changed. Iraq has the second-largest oil reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia. Today's struggle is about who will control the region's oil and the profits derived from it. Great Britain, Canada, and Australia are lining up behind U.S. military might. Meanwhile, France and Russia are employing a softer approach, and no wonder.
Profits hang in the balance.
At the end of October 1997, Iraq granted large oil concessions to two French oil companies in defiance of U.N. sanctions. A few days later, a Russian concern negotiated the exploitation of an oil well that would produce 600,000 barrels of oil daily. And as soon as U.N. sanctions are lifted, forty international oil companies await potential contracts to be granted by Iraq. The U.S. financial stake in the Middle East depends on pummeling the Arab revolution and maintaining political control. Therefore, Iraq cannot be allowed to become a flashpoint for growing dissent among Arab workers against an imperialist status quo that offers them no prospects for peace, prosperity or justice.