The Oldest Play in the Book

Every war the United States has fought in the Middle East traces back to the same calculation: who controls the oil. From Kissinger's 1974 petrodollar deal with Saudi Arabia to the capture of Maduro in Venezuela to Operation Epic Fury in Iran — the playbook is the same. The justifications change. The beneficiaries don't.In this episode, I connects the dots: the $63 billion windfall for U.S. oil companies as prices top $100 a barrel, the Mar-a-Lago dinner where Trump asked Big Oil for a billion dollars in exchange for American energy policy, the Japan lesson from 1941 that nobody in Washington wants to remember, and the constitutional evasion hiding in plain sight — a president who explained, to a room full of lawmakers, exactly why he won't call it a war.The oldest play in the book. And we keep running it. Get full access to The Cerf Report at thecerfreport.substack.com/subscribe