FROM the very start, it has been the stand of this column that the bone of contention in the Iran crisis is oil. (See “Oil, oil, oil – and US defeat,” The Manila Times, March 7, 2026.)
That initial view was prompted by the earlier abduction by US President Donald Trump of Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro. Soon after that abduction, Trump asserted full authority over Venezuela’s oil. Venezuela’s reserves are reputedly the largest in the world.
It turns out now the same natural element of oil is at the bottom of Trump’s obsession to seize Iran completely.
Certainly, Trump has advanced Iran’s suspected possession of enriched uranium capable of developing into nuclear bombs. In the name of elemental self-defense, the United States asserts its right to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons capacity.
But if the United States can invoke that right, why can’t Iran?
So, here arises the situation of two irresistible forces inevitably contending against each other.
Something’s got to give, goes a popular ditty.
Of course, Trump says, not the United States, whose military he brags as the most powerful in the world.
For his part, Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi maintains his country’s nuclear arsenal “remains buried in the rubble” of the Feb. 28, 2026 US-Israel attacks, which, aside from massive damage to Iran’s military infrastructure, practically decimated its top leadership, including the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
By “rubble,” of course, Araghchi was referring to the surface destruction of military infrastructure — not the underground bunkers keeping safe Iran’s ultra-modern weaponry.
What Trump had not foreseen was Iran’s mosaic defense structure, which enabled Tehran to retaliate from every province despite damage to its central command. Its apparently bottomless arsenal of 10-year-old drones and missiles rained ruin on Israel and United States military installations across the “Gulp Region.” For this reason, what Trump admittedly had programmed to be an attack of only one week’s duration is now into its second month, and counting.
Now, all other aspects, regardless of this lengthening Iranian crisis, oil is the one single issue.
On either side of the conflict is the intention to keep its existing control of oil.
At the moment, the focus of controversy is Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Twenty percent of the world’s oil supply passes through this waterway.
It seems surprising that China, a declared ally of Iran, is among those objecting to the closure. China’s supply of oil from the Middle East, estimated at 1.8 million barrels per day, passes through the strait.
We hasten to cite that since May 2025, the railway transit system linking China to Iran through Central Asia has already been operational. The system spans 10,850 kilometers, reachable in a record 14 days — some 15 days shorter than the sea travel from the Strait of Hormuz onto the Indian Ocean, and finally through the Malacca Strait to end up in Shanghai.
But for China, it would not help much even with the railway transit open as a substitute if the Strait of Hormuz is closed.
The infrastructure of the railway system has not been built to accommodate the huge volumes of oil meant only for carriage by large oil tankers. The discrepancy with oil on the railway transit is a huge 1 million barrels a day.
For China, that cannot be allowed.
And then again, there is the other alternative route: Exit the Strait of Hormuz, cross the Gulf of Oman, ending up at the Gwadar Port for the land transport in the China-Pakistan Corridor.
At any rate, while China’s passage through the Strait of Hormuz is not hindered at all by the Iran closure order — in fact, neither are those by vessels whose oil carriage has been paid for in Chinese yuan — what is significant in all this revelation is that oil is, indeed, the be-all of the world’s existence.
Why has this been so?
Oil must be no different from, say, trees in the forest or fish at sea, put in there by the Creator to serve a specific ecosystem function.
What function has oil been meant to serve in this regard?
Anyway, could anybody care less?
Instead, confronting us is humanity whose very breath has been latched on this single element such that once stopped, the entire human race dies.
It would be superfluous to go into details. Enough to cite that every gadget, from the biggest to the smallest, requires oil to function.
In ways more than America, China or even Iran realizes, oil has exceeded its nature-mandated function.
What is that function?
One, as far as we can discern, is food for certain microorganisms that maintain the world ecology.
Another, to fill in seepages in the earth’s crust, thereby keeping the planet intact.
These are uses in the endemic symbiotic ecosystem relationships among all elements in nature.
For instance, vegetation feeds on carbon dioxide emissions by animals, which, in a perfect exchange rate, survive on the oxygen released by plants. Without such symbiosis, the entire world’s life system collapses.
Notice how the Amazon jungles are consistently maintained in their pristine form so as to keep the world’s supply of oxygen going.
We should shudder to realize that the whole human civilization would collapse all because of the ravaging of the Amazons, if ever.
So, now finally to the point at hand: Everything in nature has been meant to serve a specific purpose. Absent such purpose in one respect, the entire gamut of originally mandated universal relationships among natural elements collapses in one fell swoop.
Sure, it seems good that the world flourished from the primitive communal system to modern civilization that we know now.
But the lesson from the Iran conflict stares everyone in the face: Oil has been far removed from its natural utility to serve insatiable human greed. And that, to the very extent of risking the extinction of the whole human race.
Threats from either side of the conflict about final resort to nuclear weapons as a way of settling the dispute for world oil control are increasing. Iran has evidently gained enough leverage in this respect to put up with the United States.
There appears to be no way whatsoever to prevent this from happening. The world never learns. In 1945, the United States’ Trinity Test for blasting the first-ever atomic bomb in history was successful, and out of that success came the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan: first Hiroshima, then Nagasaki. Within kilometers of radiuses around the drop sites, everything from people to buildings was vaporized; the aggregate total of 400,000 Japanese killed.
Now Japan is strongly contemplating revising its pacifist constitution to restore its once military might. And all this is certainly in line with ally United States’ war agenda specifically aimed at China — the final conflict.
For humanity’s sake, there must be a way to reverse this trend.
One whole wide world of environment-cleansing microorganisms is just waiting to gobble up all the oil in the universe and restore it to its inherent use.
Otherwise, recall the iconic irony Trinity Test director Kenneth Bainbridge declared at the success of his test: “Now we’re all sons of bitches.”
