Iran insists it is only seeking a peaceful energy supply, while the West suspects Tehran is building an atomic bomb. And yet, some believe it is all about the oil. Again.

­Conn Hallinan, a columnist at the Foreign Policy in Focus magazine, says the West's concern over Iran's nuclear program is merely a pretext to take control of its vast energy resources.

“I think the nuclear bomb is really in many ways a smokescreen. This is not about nuclear weapons,” he told RT. “If Iran were to use nuclear weapons, say against Israel, it would be an act of national suicide.”

Instead, the real concern for the West, Hallinan added, is Iran’s independent politics in the Middle East, as well as the eagerness among Western countries to control energy resources.

“The 1979 revolution in Iran essentially removed the second-largest oil resources and the third-largest natural gas resources from direct control by Western oil and gas companies and essentially made it independent,” he explained. “The West would love to get those resources back and they would love to also not have that kind of independent force in the Middle East. That’s also in the Israelis’ interest as well.”

In his recent article, Hallinan also wrote that Israel is interested in keeping the Middle East a fragmented place and, with that in mind, it is easy to see why Iran is not part of the general arrangement.

“They got it from their old colonial masters. You know, ‘divide and conquer’. That’s the way the British always did it,” Conn Hallinan said.