Of course it's conspiratorial. I did not provide any meaningful sources, nor did I write an essay on it. I'm just connecting the dots are there's nothing tinfoil hat_y about what I said. So I'm not sure why you freak out like that.
Anyhow. Your analogies are false for a number of reasons:
- US fracking is not nearly as vital for US as oil & gas is for Russia.
-- In US, the cheap oil has positive effects on a number of industries even though some industries suffer. You can easily see this in the respective gdp growth percentages.
-- There is a super robust neg. correlation between ruble and the oil price.
- The Russian regime has just annexed part of a sovereign nation and subsequently went to (a covert) war with it, the Russians are (or rather were up until recently) in nationalist fever which we haven't seen for more than half a century in Europe...
-- Putin is sort of forced to keep that shit up, to keep picking fights - which is one of the reasons he went to Syria (along with diverting attention from Ukraine).
-- Why is he forced to keep going? Because the economic situation in Russia is dire and the outlook is really bad. That's why Putin and his stooges fear utter chaos if the oil price keeps dropping or stays at the level it is now. Hence new laws like this one:
Russian Law Allows FSB Agents to Open Fire on Crowds
-- But now his plan is failing in Ukraine, the progress in Syria is barely measurable (except for the no. of civilians getting blown to pieces by air raids).
-- Next up is a war with Turkey (very unlikely) or somehow getting the economy up.
-- But there is round about zero chance of repairing the RU economy without a higher oil price.
-- That's why it's absolutely vital for Putin's regime for that war, or any other major war in the region to happen to somehow elevate the oil price.
This may be comparable to situation Bush jr. found himself in back in 2003 (let's just say in respect to the election '04), but not nearly identical. Russia absolutely depends on the price of oil and so does the regime's physical existence.
Lastly:
Saudi Arabia artificially creates the oversupply so I'm not sure what you're getting at. As for Iran, sure they'd love to have KSA engage in all sorts of wars, for all sorts of reasons, incl. for the potential of a higher oil price, but of course they'd prefer to do it through their proxies (e.g. Houthis).
So even though it seems unlikely at the moment, we do see Iran & KSA increasingly clashing along the Muslim sectarian lines and since both lack nukes there's no MAD to stop them from slipping into a full blown war. At the same time we have the situation with Russia. So it insane to assume that Russia may be helping out through implicit guarantees much in the same way the US does for KSA? Probably not, right?
