NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks to AFP on September 16, 2019 in the Iraqi capital ... [+]
By Jim Krane
The airstrikes on two Saudi oil facilities are rooted in a gruesome proxy war in Yemen, where Iran and Saudi Arabia – and their local allies – have faced off for nearly five years.
From the Yemeni perspective, the attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil jugular represent long-awaited reprisals for a Saudi-led bombing campaign that has killed thousands of Yemeni civilians since 2015.
The United Arab Emirates, the kingdom’s main partner in the Yemen war, recently began pulling out of the stalemated conflict. Washington has provided the coalition with intelligence and aerial refueling even as Congress objects and rights groups document unlawful airstrikes on schools, weddings and markets.
Meanwhile, Yemen, the Middle East’s poorest country, is collapsing as a viable state, overcome by famine, disease, and chaos.
But the weekend attacks on Saudi Arabia aren’t just Yemen’s revenge. They are also the fruit of stepped-up aggression from Iran. Tehran is supplying weapons and perhaps training for Yemen’s Houthi, a tribe of Zaydi Shia that overran the Yemeni capital in 2014.
Iran’s involvement has increased over time, with Tehran finding the Houthis a useful cat’s paw for access to the Arabian Peninsula, which includes oversight of a strategic oil chokepoint, the Bab al-Mandeb.
President Trump can legitimately say he inherited some of this mess.
The Obama administration should have gone to the wall to prevent Riyadh and Abu Dhabi from invading Yemen. Instead, Obama backed the war, providing the Saudi-UAE coalition with weapons and intelligence. A former Obama aide acknowledged this was a mistake.
But Trump’s reneging on the Iran nuclear deal and re-imposing US sanctions has poured oil on the fire.
Iran’s oil exports have not just been cut off, but its market share has been handed to Saudi Arabia. This alone would trigger Iranian reprisal. But Trump has also emboldened Iranian hardliners by declaring that the US seeks to avoid war.
In other words, US policy toward Iran now has no carrot and no stick.
Washington direly needs a strategy for the Middle East, instead of devising a bespoke reaction each time there is a provocation.
For starters, the Trump administration should not join the Saudi-Iran proxy war, or attack Iran on Riyadh’s behalf.
Instead, Washington should leverage the attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure that have caused unprecedented outage to push for a resolution to the disastrous war in Yemen. Riyadh needs an exit strategy, now.
Solving Yemen won’t solve Iran. Trump realizes his sanctions are driving Tehran to desperation. We should expect Iran to continue disrupting the Persian Gulf oil business – and reviving its nuclear program– until Washington lifts those sanctions. The sooner United States gets back to the negotiating table the better.
What is Trump’s plan? One day he agrees to negotiate. The next day he’s talking war. To most observers, it looks like the US president has no idea.
Finally, the events of this weekend also highlight important changes in the behavior of America’s Middle East allies.
It’s not Iran that has changed. For years, Iran has backed proxy militia to harass its enemies, and, when it suited Tehran’s interest, sown chaos in the Gulf.
Changes have taken place in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These two US allies used to be far more cautious. Both preferred to work with Washington, with ruling sheikhs making their concerns known behind closed doors.
Now, the two monarchies have adopted far more confrontational and independent approaches to the region.
Besides invading Yemen, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have blockaded Qatar, put down a pro-democracy uprising in Bahrain, and taken sides in the Syrian civil war. The UAE has also jumped into the Libyan civil war.
Pinpointing a single source for the instability in the Persian Gulf is impossible. There’s a lot of blame to go around, and a long history of grievance.
In fact, all of us have a small role in enabling chaos in the Middle East. The next time you fill your tank, you’ll see the evidence on your credit card bill.
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Jim Krane is the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute. His new book Energy Kingdomscovers oil and geopolitics in the Middle East.
