If Israel Attacks Iran: Oil To $500 Per Barrel?

From InfoWars.com:

Oil at $300 or $500 per Barrel If Israel Attacks Iran

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
November 8, 2011

Brent crude futures are up $1.17 a barrel to $115.73 on continued word that Israel may go it alone and bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. It is their highest level in nearly two months.

Read further, particularly regarding the Strait of Hormuz:

But it would be nothing compared to the cost if Israel attacks. In 2006, as Israel and the U.S. began to rattle sabers over Iran’s nuclear program, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards deployed bottom-tethered mines in the Strait of Hormuz, according to a defector.

“The plan is to stop trade,” the source told Newsmax. One third of the world’s oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

The deployment was mentioned in a plan produced by the Strategic Studies Center of the Iranian Navy in 2005. It also called for a single operational headquarters integrated with Revolutionary Guards missile units, strike aircraft, surface and underwater naval vessels, Chinese-supplied C-801 and C-802 anti-shipping missiles, mines, and coastal artillery, according to the intelligence office of the Ministry of Defense in Iran.

Revolutionary Guards missile units have identified “more than 100 targets, including Saudi oil production and oil export centers,” the defector said. “They have more than 45 to 50 Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 missiles ready for shooting” against those targets and against Israel, he added.

It's no secret that Iranian missiles can strike Israel. From GlobalPost.com:

The Tehran Times quoted Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Aerospace Force, as saying: "The range of our missiles has been designed based on American bases in the region as well as the Zionist regime."

He added that if provoked, "We can hit [Israel] from Damghan or Semnan with our missiles."

And: "America has made things easier for us by stationing its garrisons and camps in neighboring countries... We can attack all American facilities in the region by these missiles."

The Israeli border is 745 miles from Iran and U.S. bases in Afghanistan are within their 1,242 mile range, but not Europe. Hajizadeh said Iran had the technological capability to build longer-range ballistic missiles but had chosen not to.

Specifically, the U.S. has bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a presence in Bahrain and Qatar and aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf.

That said, continuing from InfoWars.com:

On November 1, a group of 13 generals and admirals produced a report warning that a “sustained disruption” of oil “would be devastating – crippling our very freedom of movement.” The report, entitled “Ensuring America’s Freedom of Movement: A National Security Imperative to Reduce U.S. Oil Dependence,” was sponsored by a San Francisco-based Energy Foundation.

“Under a worst-case scenario 30-day closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the analysis finds that the U.S. would lose nearly $75 billion in GDP,” reports National Defense Magazine.

Last week, the Rapidan Group predicted oil prices over $175 per barrel if Iran is attacked. According to a survey conducted by the group of oil industry specialists, oil prices would rise on average by 23% in the first hours of the attack.

Arnaud de Borchgrave, writing for the UPI, suggests the price of oil would go much higher. “One bomb on Iran and oil prices could shoot up to $300 or even $500 a barrel,” he writes. “The Strait of Hormuz, between Oman and Iran, is the world’s most important oil chokepoint with a daily oil flow of 16 million barrels, roughly 33 percent of all seaborne traded oil, or 17 percent of oil traded worldwide.”

“While many experts in the market believe that a war on Iran would send oil prices soaring high between, at least, $200 and $300 for each barrel, the most optimistic analysis of the impact on oil markets of an Israeli attack on Iran and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz said oil prices could spike by as much as $175/bbl,” reports the Fars News Agency, Iran’s official news outlet.

Gird thy loins, ladies and gentlemen. Our strategic oil reserves have already been tapped numerous times, our refineries need attention and, of course, the Leftists of our nation have consistently refused to allow us to build and create further refinery capacity, electrical generation stations, or allow us the capability to further tap the assets laying beneath our very feet.

Lack of real "energy independence" -- the ability to tap our own abundant sources? Purposely curtailed by Leftists, Demorats and the Religious Left?

That policy is soon to bite us right in our national ass.

BZ