And by the time of the Iraq invasion, Saddam had been weakened by years of sanctions and a virtual air war over his territory. When we invaded, he had no long range weapons to hurl around the ME.
Not so Iran today, which has I think 100s of mobile SCUD launchers, which it will for sure send against Saudi oil infrastructure targets the day we attack.
"there is just no surplus oil, Refineries operate on a just in time shipment if the ships stop it takes weeks to shut them down and start them back up.."
This is simply untrue... Crude inventories are at 5- year highs, and total over 300 million barrels of oil.
There is a LOT of oil inventory in the US. Some of it built up in part because of refinery shut downs, and now refineries are back on track, all inventories are now healthy.
Just this past week, gasoline and distillate inventories rose 4 million barrels equiv. each.
There is also oil production capacity surplus, of around 2 million barrels a day, mostly from Saudi Arabia which could pump more if needed. This is not alot, but that capacity surplus margin is expected to increase quite a bit this year and next due to non-OPEC oil production increases.
Let me repeat a point I've made elsewhere... the 'threat' of oil disruption from Iran is a hollow one, for a simple reason: They need oil export more than we need Iranian oil imports. For the world, losing Iran's oil may drop our GNP by 1% ... but for Iran, it drops their GNP by 60% .... WHO IS HURT WORSE?