TheEconomistSeptember 21st 2019 571T
he missilesstreaked down and turned
the night sky orange. In the early hours
of September 14th a barrage of fast-moving
weapons hit Abqaiq, a town in the eastern
Saudi desert that is home to the world’s
largest oil-processing facility. They
punched holes in the spheroids that pro-
cess crude oil and smashed five of Abqaiq’s
18 stabilisation towers, lighting up the
night. A separate volley set ablaze the Khu-
rais oilfield, 185km to the south west.
When the sun rose a few hours later,
thick plumes of smoke were visible from
space. The images reminded some of the
1991 war with Iraq, when Saddam Hussein’s
retreating army set fire to oilfields in Ku-
wait. Oil prices briefly surged 20% on news
that more than 5.7m barrels a day of oil pro-
duction had been halted. This was the big-
gest disruption to the world’s energy sup-
ply in decades (see next article).
The attack appears to be the most dan-
gerous escalation yet by the Islamic repub-
lic in its simmering conflict with America
and its allies. After months of sabre-rat-
tling and increasingly brazen acts of ag-
gression—from mine attacks on ships to
the seizure of a British-flagged oil tanker—
Iran (or its proxies) has moved on to strike
directly at the jugular vein of the world’s
economy. The barrage, by a mix of cruise
missiles and drones, also marks a worrying
transition to open war from the shadowy
proxy conflict that Iran has waged with
Saudi Arabia and its allies.
Iran has made mischief in the region,
and beyond, for years. The Quds Force, a
special-operations arm of the hardline Is-
lamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (irgc),
provided explosives used in attacks on
American troops in Iraq a decade ago. Iran
was also implicated in terrorist activities in
Europe and the Americas long before that.
But the regime’s most dangerous
card—a nuclear programme that may have
left it months away from the ability to
manufacture an atomic bomb—was re-
moved from the deck in 2015. An agree-
ment struck between Iran and six world
powers saw it accept strict limits on ura-
nium enrichment in exchange for relief
from some economic sanctions. The deal
may have also helped to dissuade Iran from
aggressive acts that could have threatened
the foreign investment and other benefits
promised by the deal. But that calculuschanged when President Donald Trump
unilaterally withdrew America from the
agreement in May 2018 and in effect
banned the export of its oil a year later.
Iran’s exports have shrunk from a peak of
2.8m barrels a day last year to less than 1m
now. Mr Trump has since added to the pain
with new sanctions on entire industries,
such as petrochemicals and the gold trade,
and on individuals including Mohammad
Javad Zarif, the foreign minister.
This pressure has prompted Iran to hit
back. It first sabotaged oil tankers in the
Persian Gulf. Then it stepped up a notch to
seizing them, most recently grabbing a ves-
sel on September 16th that it said was
smuggling fuel to the United Arab Emirates
(uae). Iran has also begun to flout some as-
pects of the nuclear deal itself, by enriching
uranium to proscribed quantities and lev-
els of purity.
There was a logic to this escalation. Iran
hoped that by threatening to step away
from the nuclear pact it would press the
other signatories, in particular France, Ger-
many and Britain, into offering it support
such as credit lines to mitigate the impact
of American sanctions. And by menacing
shipping in the Gulf it wanted to demon-
strate that the regime could impose costs
on America and its allies. But what may
have started as a way of signalling Iran’s
unhappiness has since escalated into more
dangerous actions such as the latest attack
on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities.
In part this is because of Mr Trump’s te-
pid response to earlier provocations. For all
his hawkish rhetoric and sanctions, a cam-Conflict in the Gulf
Iran’s dangerous game
A strike on Saudi Arabia moves a shadowy conflict closer to open war
Middle East & Africa
59 OilmarketsandIran
60 Israel’selectionconundrum
61 WarinSouthSudan
61 Climate change and MalawiAlso in this section