Things that make you go hmmmm....

I first heard this theory floated about the reason Saddam Hussein had to be ousted from power, after a decade of inconclusive aerial occupation.  Then came Libya:

Gaddafi was planning to introduce a gold dinar...  The idea, according to Gaddafi, was that African and Muslim nations would join together to create this new currency and would use it to purchase oil and other resources in exclusion of the dollar and other currencies. RT calls it "an idea that would shift the economic balance of the world."

Pricing oil in something other than the dollar would attack the basis of US power in the world. The dollar is the reserve currency based on a deal made with the Saudis back in 1971 in which the Saudis as the world's largest oil producer agreed to accept only dollars for oil. 

Taken individually, these might just be coincidences.  Now, though, we hear of the Pentagon accepting new 30,000 pound bombs, suitable for, oh, hunting Iranian 'nuke facilities.'  At roughly the same time, the President announced in Australia that Uncle Sam will be opening yet another military franchise, this time in sunny Darwin.  Most observers seem to agree this is a not-so-subtle hint to China that the U.S. doesn't see itself as a diminishing world player.

China.  Iran.  What could those dots possibly have to do with the first two?

This.

Our nation's great Achilles' heel is our economy--specifically, the way in which we've abused the hell out of the dollar.  The only reason it's accepted as a worldwide reserve currency is the demand for it in the oil trade. It certainly doesn't merit such status on the strength of our (ahem) fiscal prudence.  So it stands to reason any threat to the dollar's preeminence (aside from the damage we inflict ourselves) is likely to provoke a reaction.

No, I can't prove this issue is the link, the sole or even main animation behind the four sets of events listed here.  That it's a plausible theory, though, shows the fragility of the economy undergirding the power of what we're still told (repeatedly, ad nauseum) is the "indispensable nation."  Follow the money, as they say.  As two-time Medal of Honor winner Smedley Butler famously noted, "war is a racket."   And rackets require muscle.

"There's a shadow on the faces of the men who send the guns

to the wars that are fought in places, where their business interests run..."