Gal Luft, posting at Harvard’s Middle East Strategy blog, theorizes that recent intra-OPEC squabbles between Saudi Arabia and Iran over oil output are being influenced by each country’s hopes for the outcome of the U.S. presidential elections. Luft thinks Saudi Arabia is rooting for McCain because of their fear that an American withdrawal would strengthen Iran, and thus the Saudis might release more oil thinking a stabilization in prices would help McCain’s chances in the fall. One then has to wonder if the Saudis think McCain’s energy independence plan is merely concocted as lip service or political expediency, considering it contains some pretty harsh words for certain authoritarian regimes in the Middle East.
