By Don Skinner

I’ve been reading “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” an important book by three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. The book is both exhilarating and depressing. Exhilarating because it puts a number of critical issues into perspective — a necessary first step toward figuring out what we might do about them. Depressing because one comes away from it realizing that, even having gained that perspective, doing anything about it remains immensely difficult.

In the past few days, however, the book proved prophetic in a way I did not earlier anticipate: It makes sense of Iran’s just-concluded presidential election and the seemingly out-of-control mobs surging through Tehran’s streets shouting anti-government slogans.

Readers take note: The significance of what we are observing has nothing to do with the emotional appearance of events, and everything to do with their political substance. Had I not read Friedman’s book, I might have concluded the opposite (“There go the Iranians again, venting their Shia exhibitionism.”) How Friedman changed my perception you can read for yourself in chapter 4, “Fill ’Er Up with Dictators,” in which he argues persuasively, backed by extensive data, that excess wealth derived from the sale of petroleum results in a decline of democracy — and Islam has nothing to do with it.

The correlation works like this. (1) The more oil a country has, the more money it makes on the global market — especially during times of high prices like this. (2) The higher the price, the more billions of oil-consumer wealth (that’s us) is transferred to oil-producing countries. (3) The more money a producing regime controls, the less need there is to behave responsibly. Dictatorial rulers simply lather wealth on projects that soothe public appetites, buy off political opponents, hire thugs to suppress the opposition, or all of the above. In the process, democratic institutions whither, economies fail, and independent initiative withers.

Friedman puts it succinctly: “Oil-backed regimes that do not have to tax their people for revenue — because they can just drill an oil well and sell the oil abroad — also do not have to listen to their people or represent their wishes.”

So consistent is this equation that one can actually trace the erosion of a country’s democratic health simply by charting how much oil it sells. The only exceptions appear to be nations that had well-established democratic institutions long before they discovered oil: the U.S., Great Britain, Denmark and Norway. By contrast, Friedman invites us to consider the hand-in-hand growth of petrowealth and authoritarian governments in 19 countries girdling the globe, including Egypt, Indonesia, Kuwait, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela — and Iran.

This results in at least two unfortunate consequences, which is where the picture becomes really depressing for the U.S. But it’s past time we understood them: (1) Our gluttonous dependency on imported oil transfers massive wealth from Americans to a string of corrupt regimes around the world; and (2) this wealth provides dictatorial regimes the surplus cash they need to finance global terrorism.

To be blunt, our failure to curb our consumption of oil by means of intense conservation efforts and the development of viable energy alternatives feeds the very terror machine of which we ourselves are the primary victims, and requires us to waste billions more defending ourselves. We not only buy the executioner his ax, we pay his salary.

What is so striking about Iran’s post-election turmoil, therefore, is that it does not appear simply to be another exercise in Islamic fervor, but the predictable consequence of petropolitics. A people just growing accustomed to the fruits of democratic government have been subjected to a clumsy attempt at repression, and they’re as angry about it now as they were when they overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah three decades ago. But the target of their wrath isn’t the “Great Satan” but their own oil-funded government, which has blocked democratic reform, brought severe inflation, and now is accused of stealing an election.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may hang on to the presidency. Especially interesting will be the result of the shifting stance of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who announced that the election was the result of “divine assessment” (oh, please) only to backtrack 48 hours later and call for investigations. Would I be incorrect to sense an element of fear here? Khamenei is committed to the maintenance of religious rule; but more committed to the survival of Khamenei. He knows that kings are dethroned by rebellion in the streets.

More remarkable, however, is to witness Iran’s citizens mount fiery demonstrations against a petrodollar-funded government that should by now have paid everyone off so handsomely that political opposition would be inconsequential. In spite of what else we may think of their country, this augurs well for Iran. It may augur well for us, too.

Skinner, a native of Meadville, is chaplain emeritus of Allegheny College and a longtime environmentalist.