Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal, former ambassador to the United States, has a suggestion for America: drop this nonsense called energy independence. In a strongly-worded essay in Foreign Policy magazine, which coincides with the 150th anniversary of Edwin Drake’s discovery of oil in the United States, Turki lambastes American politicians for invoking energy independence, which “is now as essential as baby-kissing,” accusing them of “demagoguery.” For him, energy independence is “political posturing at its worst—a concept that is unrealistic, misguided, and ultimately harmful to energy-producing and consuming countries alike.” “Like it or not,” Turki concludes, “the fates of the United States and Saudi Arabia are connected and will remain so for decades to come.” (He said much the same in this clip from last May; if you don’t see it, click here.)

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We’ve heard these lines before each time the United States made progress toward lessening its dependence on oil. In February, for example, Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, warned of a “nightmare scenario” if consuming countries made progress in the development of alternative fuels. A decade ago, his predecessor, Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, called technology “the real enemy for OPEC.” This is understandable. After all, no pusher wants to see his client circling around a rehab clinic. For Saudi Arabia, a world where oil plays a marginal role is the nightmarish materialization of the Saudi saying, “My father rode a camel, I drive a car, my son flies a jet plane, his son will ride a camel.”

More troubling is the parade of prominent Americans who deride the notion of energy independence, viewing it as jingoistic, unsophisticated, naive and misleading. One cannot doubt the patriotism of former CIA director John Deutch, who said “energy independence is not a constructive idea,” or former secretary of defense and energy James Schlesinger, who called it a “forlorn hope,” or Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Yergin who referred to it as “pipe dream,” or Andy Grove, former chairman of Intel, who called the concept “a faulty goal,” or even the members of the Council on Foreign Relations energy security task force who went so far as to accuse those promoting energy independence of “doing the nation a disservice.” But just like Prince Turki, all of those distinguished Americans misunderstand what energy independence really is. As a result, they underestimate our ability to get there.

Contrary to popular conception, energy independence does not mean self-sufficiency. It doesn’t mean not importing any oil or walling ourselves off from the global market. Energy independence is not a function of the amount of oil we consume or import. Rather, energy independence means turning oil from a strategic commodity second to none—one that underlies the global economy and determines the course of world affairs—into just another commodity to trade.

Oil’s strategic status stems from its virtual monopoly over fuel for transportation, which in turn underlies our entire way of life. Worldwide, 95 percent of our transportation energy is petroleum-based. Our cars, trucks planes and ships can run on nothing but petroleum. This is why the much-touted policies that aim to either increase oil supply through domestic drilling or decrease its use by boosting fuel efficiency, while helpful, are insufficient as they do not address the factor that gives oil its strategic status: the petroleum-only vehicle.

Energy independence thus requires breaking the virtual monopoly of oil over transportation fuels, and this can only be done via competition in the transportation fuel sector. (Think about our electricity sector, where a variety of competing energy sources—coal, natural gas, nuclear, solar and wind—can contribute to the grid.) If our cars and trucks were able to run on other fuels in addition to those refined from petroleum, Saudi Arabia’s oil would have to compete over the drivers’ wallet against utility companies, alternative liquid fuels producers and natural gas suppliers. But as long as our cars are gasoline-only, oil remains the only game in town, which is exactly what Saudi Arabia wants.

A few types of vehicle technologies allow us to break oil’s monopoly. The first, and most affordable, is the flex-fuel vehicle that can run on any combination of gasoline and alcohol (alcohol does not mean just ethanol, and ethanol does not mean just corn). It costs an extra $100 per new car to make a regular car flex-fuel. All it takes is a fuel sensor and a corrosion-resistant fuel line. An Open Fuel Standard ensuring that every new car sold in the United States be flex-fuel would not only give rise to an industry of alternative fuels and the associated refueling infrastructure, but it would also drive foreign automakers to add fuel flexibility to all of their models, effectively making it an international standard.

Electricity is another transportation fuel that can compete against oil. It is cheap, largely clean, domestically produced and can be made from multiple sources. Its refueling infrastructure is widely available. All that is needed for an electric car to connect to the grid is an extension cord. Most automakers have already committed to produce models of limited-range pure electric vehicles (EV) or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV). The latter allow drivers to travel on stored electric power for the first 20-40 miles, after which the car keeps running on the liquid fuel in the tank, providing the standard 200-400 mile range. For the 50 percent of Americans who drive 25 miles per day or less, shifting from barrels to electrons would make the visit to the local gas station a rarity. If all of those Americans owned PHEVs, a population the size of New York, Florida and Pennsylvania combined would be off oil most days of the year. A PHEV would normally drive 100-150 miles per gallon of gasoline. If it is also made as flex-fuel and fueled with a blend of 80 percent alcohol and 20 percent gasoline, oil economy could reach over 500 miles per gallon of gasoline.

These technologies are either at or few years away from commercialization. If we only understood energy independence properly and took the relevant measures to open the transportation fuel market to competition, oil would be far less central to the world economy than it is today. If we ensure that new cars are platforms on which fuels can compete rather than perpetuate the petroleum standard, then Prince Turki’s descendants, on the 200th anniversary of Drake’s discovery, will be more likely to ride camels than private jets. No wonder he wants us to think otherwise.

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There has been an ongoing debate here at MESH and elsewhere about whether Israel can, will, or should launch an attack against Iran to prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons. One possible method by which such an attack might be degraded or even deterred is if Russia sells the advanced version of its S-300 missile defense system to Iran. But while Tehran has actively sought this weapons system from Moscow and press reports pop up from time about how Russia has agreed to provide it to Iran (or even that Moscow is doing so), the Kremlin has not yet done so. Further, there is reason to believe that it will not do so in future either.

Moscow now has good relations with Israel, which the Kremlin values for several reasons: the growing Russian-Israeli trade relationship, Israeli security assistance in dealing with Muslim opposition forces inside Russia, and the addition of Israeli technology which greatly enhances Moscow’s ability to sell arms to India in particular. In addition, with over a million Russian-speakers now living in Israel, there are close cultural contacts between Russia and Israel—which the Israeli government sought to increase in 2008 when it ended visa requirements for Russian tourists.

One of Israel’s highest priorities in terms of what it wants from Russia is for Moscow not to assist Iran in ways that could help it to harm Israel. The suspicion that Iran is attempting to acquire nuclear weapons, combined with Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s repeated statements expressing the desire to wipe Israel “off the map,” have had an especially powerful impact on the Jewish state. Many conservative Israeli political leaders—including the current prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu—have expressed the belief that Iran will attack Israel with nuclear weapons if Tehran develops them, and have indicated that Israel will use force in order to prevent Iran from doing so.

Israel has long wanted Russia to halt all actions helping Iran acquire nuclear weapons or missiles that could deliver them. But while any such move on Moscow’s part would be welcome, Israeli intelligence has basically concluded (as noted by Romen Bergman in The Wall Street Journal on May 16) that it is now too late to dissuade Iran from acquiring the bomb. What Israel wants most urgently from Moscow, then, is not to provide Tehran with the S-300 missile defense system which might thwart or minimize the effectiveness of an Israeli attack against Iranian nuclear facilities.

For many years, Russia has hemmed and hawed about its willingness to sell S-300s to Iran. At times, the indications that Moscow would sell them have been so strong that Tehran has announced that an agreement had been reached and even that Moscow had begun to deliver the weapons. Whenever this has occurred, Moscow has stated that it has not sold or delivered S-300s to Tehran, but insisted that it has the right to sell defensive weapons not prohibited to Iran by the Security Council.

On December 17, 2008, for example, RIA Novosti reported not only that Moscow and Tehran were negotiating over the sale of medium-range SAMs, but that Russia was “fulfilling the contract” to supply S-300s to Tehran. The deputy head of the Iranian Majles’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee also claimed that Moscow and Tehran had finally reached an agreement over the delivery of S-300s. On December 22, however, Russia’s Federal Military-Technical Cooperation Service (the agency overseeing Russian arms sales) stated that reports about Russia selling S-300s to Iran “are wrong.”

Just how much Moscow’s desire for good relations with Israel has in the past affected its reluctance to sell the S-300 to Tehran is unclear. There is reason to believe, though, that maintaining good relations with Israel has recently become a very important consideration for Moscow. In April 2009, Israel reportedly agreed to sell $50 million worth of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to Russia. At about this time, Russian sources made clear once again that Moscow was not selling S-300s to Iran. While Moscow did not give Israel a firm promise not to sell these weapons to Iran, an informed Israeli source indicated that Russian officials did give “a vague assurance that the deal is not going ahead” (according to Reuters).

Why would the Russian military’s purchase of a mere $50 million worth of UAVs from Israel influence Moscow not to sell S-300s to Iran? An unattributed commentary published April 20, 2009, in Nezavisimoye voyennoye obozreniye pointed toward a powerful incentive. After noting that the $50 million deal was for 10 Israeli UAVs, the article indicated that Moscow might buy as many as 50 to 100 UAVs from Israel, plus other weapons systems from it. The reason for importing these Israeli products, the article made clear, is because the Russian “military cannot wait indefinitely until our highbrow designers condescend to the army and cease to pull money from it, supplying the field with, instead of modern combat-support systems, merely promises and unsubstantiated advertising arguments.”

The Russian Defense Ministry, then, appears to be purchasing weapons and other materiel from Israel because the Russian defense industry either cannot produce them as well, or cannot produce them at all. To the extent that this $50 million deal represents the beginning of Russian acquisition of—and dependence on—Israeli military technology, Israel is very likely to be in a stronger position than before to discourage Moscow from providing Tehran with S-300s or similar goods that could deter or degrade an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Whatever other obstacles there may be to Israel launching an attack against Iran, it does not appear that the Russian S-300 missile defense system will be one of them.