Iran war: $130 billion for American oil, the bill for households

According to Al Jazeera, published on 2 November, American oil and gas companies are the big winners of the war against Iran: they would be raking in some $130 billion, while household bills soar. The channel explains that energy from the Gulf and from Russia is being hit, which leaves the field open to American producers. The details of the calculation method, the split between companies and the scale of the increase for households do not appear in the dispatch we have. We will not invent them.

From there, our reading. It is not an established fact, it is a framework.

Cui bono? The question answers itself. When rival barrels disappear from the market, prices rise. Whoever can still deliver cashes in. No conspiracy in a boardroom is needed: the war sorts the producers, and the market does the rest. The winner is known: the shareholder of American oil. So is the loser: the family choosing between heating the house and filling the fridge.

This is a transfer of class, plainly put. A war rent rises on one side, a levy on wages and household budgets falls on the other. Marx put it in his own way: the idea that an abundance of profits might be linked to the misery of the people is considered "unhealthy". The figures, for their part, do not care. The war becomes here a machine of accumulation, and the energy bill is the pipe.

There is also the imperial logic. For Lenin, finance capital seeks raw materials, outlets and spheres of influence, and the division of the world is played out between great powers and blocs of monopolies. Sanctions, alliances, arms contracts and energy routes are its political wrapping. Reading the Iran war this way does not oblige anyone to claim that Washington started it for oil: the dispatch does not say so, and neither do we. But the result matters. A conflict that weakens the Gulf and Russia, two rivals in the energy market, strengthens the American position. Whether intended or not, the state serves the class that profits.

We will be told, of course, of the "rules-based order". A fine name for an order in which some scoop up the stakes while others pay for the heating. Governments will have two answers: one-off cheques to households, and appeals to "solidarity". A price shield does not make the rent give back what it took. Luxemburg had warned: concessions last as long as profits tolerate them, and managing the system is not changing it. The real question is one of power: who can force a tax on these windfall profits, or even put energy under public control?

What we still do not know: the exact share of profits attributable to the war, and how long the effect will last. What we can already see: some are counting their billions, others their bills.