That would be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez. We are second to none in our concern with the Iranian true believer, but we also think that high oil prices are causing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to behave like a teenager who just hit the Lotto:

“Any possible sanctions from the west could possibly, by disturbing Iran’s political and economic situation, raise oil prices beyond levels the west expects,” [the Iranian oil minister] told Iranian state radio. In a provocative move, Iran also announced plans yesterday to convene a “scientific” conference to examine the evidence supporting the Holocaust. The news comes weeks after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad provoked a global outcry by describing the slaughter of 6 million Jews by the Nazis in the second world war as a “myth”.

Chavez is also off on a bender after matching all six in the OPEC Powerball:

He asked hypothetically what would happen if he decided to halt oil shipments to the United States. “Every day we send them 1.5 million barrels of oil,” said Chavez, whose country is the world’s No. 5 oil exporter. “What would happen if tomorrow I were to say that no ship leaves for the United States? How high would the price of a barrel go? I think it could hit US$100 (euro83.06),” he said

These fellows seem to think their anti-Semitism and trash talk against the West and the US makes them a big hit at home and abroad, and perhaps it does at the moment. But oil is one of the most cyclical of commodities, and price threats have a short half-life. We’ll see what they sound like the next time there’s $20 oil in a few years (assuming that Chavez’s buddy Ahmadinejad hasn’t blown up the world by then).

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2006 at 10:30 am and is filed under business, General, idiots!, Left of Left, Religion, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.