What strikes is the sheer power and helplessness of diplomacy.

Its the same game boys!
A country spending on defense is a must for numerous reasons which is out of scope here to jot them down.

If there were to be any considerable change, it would be during and after 3rd world war.

Fucking neutralization and change of power !

~ Soul

“US airborne troops would seize the oil installations in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and might even ask the British to do the same in Abu Dhabi.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3333995.stm

British spies in 1973 warned of U.S. plans to invade Arab lands
LONDON (AP) — British spy chiefs warned after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war that they believed the United States might invade Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi to seize their oil fields, according to records released Thursday.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-01-01-britain-nixon_x.htm

“Ted Heath’s government feared - at the height of the 1973 oil crisis - that the White House was planning to invade Saudi Arabia and the Gulf to secure fuel supplies, according to Downing Street files released today.
The files, handed over to the National Archive in Kew under the 30-year rule, expose a disturbing and acrimonious episode in “the special relationship” between London and Washington.”

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/politicspast/story/0,9061,1114530,00.html

Secret UK government documents, declassified for the first time this year, reveal that the US government was prepared to invade Arab states when the oil crisis began in 1973. Yet there are still some people who cling to the belief that the US government would not send us to war for oil.

http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=440

An intelligence assessment by the British government in January revealed that in 1973 Washington drew up a plan to seize oilfields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi to counter an Arab oil embargo against the West.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3625207.stm

I remember this incident. I felt sick about it. There were all kinds of speculation about it; like why wasn’t the pilot of the US plane able to determine through his equipment that the Iranian plane was civilian. Civilian planes and military planes have different communications equipment (markers) to let other planes know what they are. Then, the US government was questioning weather the plane was actually civilian or a military plane covering as civilian (but never came out with a purpose for their “mission”).

Regardless, it was very sad. I remember news clips of the families in the airport in Iran.

This was about the same time that Kuwaiti tankers were being re-flagged as American, so they could safely make their way up the Gulf. There were marine mines in the Gulf for a few years. There was a lot of tension on all sides and it was a strange time.

Iran does have F-14. The US used to supply Iran with weapons during Shah ruling. You can actually see some of these F-14 in Google Earth if you look at military airports in Iran.

So he probably did get orders to shoot the airplane, a few months later the Iraq-Iran war ended.

The discussions on that wikipedia link is interesting though