Stratfor
Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Robert D. Kaplan's new book, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate
, which will be released Sept. 11.
, which will be released Sept. 11.
The most important facts about Iran go unstated because they are so
obvious. Any glance at a map would tell us what they are. And these
facts explain how regime change or evolution in Tehran -- when, not if,
it comes -- will dramatically alter geopolitics from the Mediterranean
to the Indian subcontinent and beyond.
Virtually all of the Greater Middle East's oil and natural gas lies
either in the Persian Gulf or the Caspian Sea regions. Just as shipping
lanes radiate from the Persian Gulf, pipelines will increasingly radiate
from the Caspian region to the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, China and
the Indian Ocean. The only country that straddles both energy-producing
areas is Iran, stretching as it does from the Caspian to the Persian
Gulf. In a raw materials' sense, Iran is the Greater Middle East's
universal joint.
