On September 14th an attack on Saudi Arab oil facility resulted in nearly half of Saudi oil output being hit amounting to roughly 5% of global oil supply. Saudi Arab was quick to fix the blame on Iran, although the attack was claimed by Houthis of Yemen. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo too was quick to blame Iran too in his initial statement.
‘On September 18, the Saudi defense ministry declared that the attack was “unquestionably sponsored” by Tehran and put on display the debris of drones and cruise missiles to demonstrate that they were of Iranian origin.'(The National Interest, September 18th)
This confrontation heightened tensions for the Middle East. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan was later asked by President Trump to step in to help fizzle out the situation. At the UN HQ PM Imran did meet President Rouhani recently to discuss the scenario. What was not disclosed to the public was exactly what was discussed. Khan admitted to talking with Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman before his discussion with Rouhani.
Different countries aligned with either of the two nations expressed their response to the attack. However what was clear by their response was the fact that it was more in alignment with their larger regional and global policies without focusing on the incident itself. To quote one example, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson had made a statement to the effect that Britain has ‘concluded’ that it was Iran who is responsible for the attack on the Saudi oil facilities. Though he stated he would want to reduce tensions between Saudi Arab and Iran, nonetheless, Britain would definitely consider joining hands with U.S-led military effort in support of strengthening the security of the Gulf Kingdom.
Although the tensions between Saudi Arab and Iran have existed since the two started politically supporting the Sunni and Shia sects for their regional and global strength- Saudi Arab has played the role of the major front foot-soldier of U.S in the latter’s strategy towards Iran.
For both U.S and Saudi Arab the fear of Iran’s escalation on nuclear front is palpable. The scrapping of INF Treaty by U.S, an ill thought out step without any other alternate treaty has left the field wide open for nuclear proliferation. It has also increased fear for U.S of Iran stepping up her ballistic missile development.
In an article for CRSS on May 31st 2019 I had posed a question, “Can the US, with INF out of the way, ethically and legally force sanctions upon Iran and force it to abandon its ballistic missile development, when the US herself has abandoned the INF Treaty?”
A matter of concern in this step taken by the US is that with the dissolution of the INF, there is no new structure created to take its place to combat arms proliferation. And with no structure in place and with many nations possessing dangerous weapons, it will be a free fall towards a chaotic world order.
The fact that nations are sitting on a bomb that can go off, cannot be disregarded. The world needs to move towards a situation where this possibility is scaled down
In such a scenario, each country will have the license to operate on its own without any guiding policy. This not only gives an opportunity to nations to develop weapons, but also makes it difficult to track and cease procurement of weapons by terrorists.
In spite of all diplomatic efforts taken by Russia to stop the scrapping of this policy- U.S had been adamant to get out of it. Get out it did. However, it is facing the yield of the seeds it had sown. Nonetheless, U.S has refrained from engaging into any kind of military conflict with Iran as a consequence of the attack. Trump is obviously wary of getting U.S involved into another costly war.
Just as Trump wants to disengage his soldiers in Afghanistan to fulfill his election promise of ‘bringing our boys home’ he is no hurry to engage them on another foreign soil with American elections looming ahead. Just like he sought a face-saving agreement with Taliban to pull his soldiers home, he similarly sought a face-saving after initial accusations on Iran by asking PM Khan to ‘mediate’ to de-escalate the heightened tensions. Saudi Arab therefore has to take U.S out of the equation if it plans a military retaliation on Iran. This of course, weakens the Kingdom’s stance.
Although there seems to be no chances of Iran and Saudi Arab going to direct war with each other, exchange of hot words notwithstanding-this incident that flared up tensions of the possibility of such an event taking place is far from pleasant.
The fact that nations are sitting on a bomb that can go off, cannot be disregarded. The world needs to move towards a situation where this possibility is scaled down. The first step should be developing a nuclear non-proliferation treaty that takes the edge off. Simultaneously, PM Khan may request at least two other nations (one supporting each Saudi Arab and Iran) to join hands in working towards addressing their differences and creating a better working relationship.
The writer is a lawyer, academic and political analyst. She has authored a book titled ‘A Comparative Analysis of Media & Media Laws in Pakistan