Hopes for a resumption oil flows have been buoyed by the Iraqi parliament’s approval last week of a budget amendment.

Yet oil had everything to do with regime change in Iraq–and it would be hard to find an official elsewhere, and certainly not in the Middle East, for whom the linkage would be anything but direct.

Oil major BP is expected to spend up to $25 billion over the lifetime of a project to redevelop four Kirkuk oil and gas ...