ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the interactions between petroleum prices, politics and war in contemporary Middle East affairs, and particularly as a crucial dimension in Iraq policy. The period, 1985-89, saw a substantial revival in crude oil production and exports by member countries of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that was due both to increases in world oil consumption and to a limited growth in supplies deriving from non-OPEC sources. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, emerging from eight years of war with Iran as probably the strongest of the Arab world's dictators, focused his criticism on two of the region's weakest political and military actors, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and whose oil pricing policies directly contradicted his own. Several weeks after, Kuwait's Oil Minister Sheikh Ah Khalifa al-Sabah indicated that his country would revert to its export quota of 1. 5 million bpd and announced that Kuwait had stopped all spot sales to an already saturated market.
