One option is off the table

In an interview with the travelling journalists on his plane back to Oman yesterday, Dick Cheney indicated that there's one strategy he won't be pursuing to weaken Iran -- lower oil prices, which have been widely documented as putting severe pressure on the Iranian government. His statement occurred in the context of an inexplicably anonymous interview with "Senior Administration Official" even though, as the Wall Street Journal notes, it's clear from the start that it's Cheney. Anyway --

Q If I could change the subject to something that came up earlier in the trip. You've talked about Iran and the other threat the U.S. faces there, to what extent do you think your -- it's been described as hawkish, or you're keeping the military option on the table puts a level of risk into the equation that oil markets, for example, factor in and actually help the Iranian government because they're so reliant on oil? Is there a --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think that's a bit of a stretch. All I said is what we've said consistently for months, even years now, which is that all options are on the table. We haven't taken any option off the table.

Q If you took the military option off the table, markets around the world --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: What do you think would happen?

Q I don't know what would happen. But people say oil prices go down 10 percent or 15 percent and that would start to hurt Ahmadinejad.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I don't buy it.

Since every part of the questioner's thesis is well documented (note inter alia the rise in oil prices since the latest round of sabre-rattling began), the only conclusion is that Cheney wants high oil prices.

The interview is also noteworthy for his repeating the claim that the US can't leave Iraq because it would be a bad signal to Afghanistan about its commitment there, when of course the US can always send a direct signal to Afghanistan by adding more troops, removing them from the Iraq quagmire. As Tony Blair has done. But for Cheney it's all about "signals" as opposed to constraints and actions.

[Note: much more from the invaluable Dan Froomkin on the interview, including its bizarre groundrules; the Iran-oil price discussion, perhaps the most interesting part of the interview, was initially omitted from the New York Times account]