Professor Henry Srebrnik

Professor Henry Srebrnik

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

U.S. Trapped Between Iran, Saudi Arabia

By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

The United States has sent troops to Saudi Arabia, following the drone and cruise missile attacks that caused major fires at two of Saudi Aramco’s oil facilities in the kingdom's oil-rich Eastern Province.

Washington and Riyadh accused Iran of involvement in the attacks, which interrupted about half of the company’s total output. They believe the weapons were actually launched from southwestern Iran.

Iran maintains advanced missile and drone programs which allow it to support regional proxies, such as the Houthis in Yemen.

It does so because it operates in a gray zone between war and peace in order to challenge the status quo while managing risk.

Saudi defence systems apparently failed to detect the attacks, underscoring the country’s vulnerability.

Tehran has rejected the accusations-- denial has always been one of its trademarks. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country did not want to engage in a military conflict with neighboring Saudi Arabia or its allies. But Riyadh claims to have proof it was Iran behind the attacks.

Evidence points in the Islamic Republic’s direction. After all, Iran’s officials have openly signaled that they will jeopardize oil commerce unless the U.S. ends its campaign of “maximum pressure” and lifts its sanctions, which are crippling Iran’s economy.

Iran began to escalate its tactics in May, after U.S. President Donald Trump designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and ended any waivers on Iran’s oil-export sanctions, seeking to drive Tehran’s oil revenues toward zero.

Since then, Iran has shot down an American drone and captured a number of oil tankers in international waterways.

“World powers know that in the case that oil is completely sanctioned and Iran’s oil exports are brought down to zero, international waterways can’t have the same security as before,” Rouhani stated in August.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif followed this threat with another. He indicated that Tehran might act “unpredictably” in response to “unpredictable” U.S. policies under Trump. He raised the specter of “all-out war” in the event of U.S. or Saudi military strikes.

The departure of Trump’s national security adviser, the hawkish John Bolton, on Sept. 10 has been celebrated in Tehran, seen as an indication that the U.S. is wavering in its determination to stop Iranian aggression.

Iran’s leaders may have bet that President Trump, wary of Middle East conflicts, would decline to respond with force.

“Iranian hard-liners consider Trump’s inconsistency to be weakness,” according to Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. 

Iran is no pushover. It has a nuclear arms program, supports two terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, and has turned war-torn Syria and Iraq into vassal states. It has a foothold in Yemen.

But Iran’s attacks cannot go unanswered. If they don’t Iran will not stop, and its attacks will only intensify.

The Iranians and Saudis are fighting for hegemony in the Muslim Middle East, especially in the Persian Gulf.

They are natural enemies that justify themselves by labeling each other apostates, with Riyadh heading the Sunni branch of Islam and Tehran the rival Shi’ite camp.

 And America is caught in the middle, forced to support one theocracy against the other.

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