Chimbu,
Your comments are spot on. The FED is pumping out dollars to keep the current account defecit in check. Oil producing nations are dragging thier feet wrt output quotas as a higher market rate is required to counter the sliding greenback.
Which leads on to what Jet a Knight says about OPEC needing to find an alternative currency to the greenback. Iraq found out the hard way of what happens when you move beyond the system that ensures US dollar hegemony. Hopefully Iran will take note and abandon its plan for a Euro based bourse.
The sabre rattling in the ME is exclusively about oil. WMD/Nukes have stuff all to do with it. Every CEO of the ruling elite west knows this which explains why so many western multinationals and governments are supportive of military intervention despite any moral misgivings they may have.