Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

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That's ok..my point - they have nothing. Without oil sales they aren't even a 3rd world country. It's easy to say oil is a driving factor, but the OPEC nations are basically all the same. As they say in Texas: "Big hat no cattle", for the OPEC nations it's "All oil and nothing else".

Of course it would also be ridiculous to say the regions stability is not in our best interest, since it is. But any despotic ruler of an OPEC nation will still have to sell oil to the world market, unless of course, they want to destroy their economic foundation.