5 takeaways from attack on Saudi oil production
When an airborne volley of what investigators now believe were cruise missiles and drones laid waste to Saudi oil processing centers Saturday, the price of crude jumped and tremors rippled through the global energy market.
Whether it can definitively be established that Iran launched this brazen attack, and whether the United States will respond militarily, remain to be seen. But certain takeaways are already clear:
1. Donald Trump is caught between competing interests. Facing reelection next year after promising to avoid foreign entanglements, the president is loath to start a new war. “We’d certainly like to avoid it,” he said Monday, referring to Iran. But he also wants to appear tough. “We ... are locked and loaded depending on verification,” he tweeted Sunday. His advisers, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, unhesitatingly blame Iran for the attack on Saudi oil production. Trump equivocates. Back in June, he prepared a military response to Iran shooting down a U.S. drone and then called it off at the last minute. If of-two-minds caution keeps America out of war, that’s one thing. If it emboldens Iran to keep gambling with more aggression, that’s something else entirely.
2. The Saudis are bad actors capable of fighting for themselves. If Iran is a malignant force in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is only marginally less bad — arguably unworthy of American blood and treasure. From Riyadh came ruthless orders a year ago to murder and dismember Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. And for four years, the Saudis have waged a war of depredation in neighboring Yemen. According to United Nations investigators, they have wantonly killed thousands of innocents, displaced millions and engaged in torture, rape and the use of child soldiers. Trump often defends his support for the kingdom in terms of job-creating Saudi dollars spent on U.S. munitions, as if the American military works for the highest bidder. That’s insufficient rationale for plunging the United States into an age-old Sunni-Shiite rift.
3. A new generation of weapons are cheap and scary. Saudi Arabia has one of the world’s largest military budgets and larded defenses with regiments of U.S. Patriot missiles. None of it worked last Saturday. Someone — likely Iran — eluded Saudi defenses and smashed the kingdom’s energy processing facilities, cutting Riyadh’s oil production in half. The sophistication of these robot weapons and their ability to wreak havoc — even in the USA — was highlighted by FBI Director Christopher Wray in Senate testimony last year. “The threat,” he said, “is steadily escalating.”
4. Oil crises are not what they used to be. Most Americans are too young or weren’t even born when OPEC embargoed oil in the 1970s, creating worldwide scarcity, long lines at service stations and gas rationing in America based on odd or even last numbers on license plates. With the boom of domestic energy production in the United States over the past decade, largely due to fracking, America is now the largest oil producer. (Saudi Arabia remains the largest oil exporter.) The United States is far less dependent on Saudi crude — importing about a quarter of 2003 levels — and more insulated from disruption in Saudi processing, which provides more than 10% of the world’s oil.
5. Trashing international accords comes with a price. Eager to undo all things Obama, Trump last year pulled America out of the multinational agreement that kept Tehran from building a nuclear weapon, complaining that it was not permanent enough. The economic sanctions he then imposed (and threatened Wednesday to ratchet up further) have been surprisingly effective — draining Iran’s oil revenue, strangling its economy and causing some in Tehran’s political establishment to contemplate negotiations. Even so, the sanctions have also pushed increasingly desperate hard-line leaders to lash out in the kind of brinkmanship that might have led to Saturday’s attack. Trump’s decision to ignore allies and act alone in pulling out of the nuclear accord makes it tougher now to build a coalition for confronting Iran.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Oil production attack: 5 takeaways about Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia
