The Economist UK - 21.09.2019

58 Middle East & Africa The EconomistSeptember 21st 2019

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paign he calls “maximum pressure”, the

president is averse to military conflict. He

ordered retaliatory air strikes after Iran

shot down an American drone flying over

the Gulf in June, only to recall the bombers

at the last minute.

Much is still unknown about the latest

attack. But it is reasonable to conclude, as

Saudi Arabia (and its ally America) soon

did, that Iran had a hand in it. The Islamic

republic denies involvement, but circum-

stantial evidence links it to the weapons

used. The first claim of responsibility came

from the Houthis, who control northern

parts of Yemen and its capital, Sana’a. un

investigators have previously said that Iran

had supplied the Houthis with advanced

weapons, including drones, missiles and

equipment to make rocket fuel.

Many Houthi drones look almost iden-

tical to Iranian ones. Scores have been

flown into Saudi Arabia, aimed at airports,

military bases and other targets. In Decem-

ber 2017 the Houthis even launched mis-

siles towards a nuclear reactor under con-

struction in Abu Dhabi. In January the un

noted that the Houthis had acquired a new

drone with a range of up to 1,500km. In May

the group claimed to have struck two oil-

pumping stations and a pipeline deep in

Saudi territory using such drones.

Houthi dunnit?

The weapons used in the latest attack seem

to have been developed in Iran. Fabian

Hinz, an analyst with the James Martin

Centre for Nonproliferation Studies, wrote

that wreckage found near Abqaiq looked

like a cruise missile known as the Quds-1,

probably designed by Iran. At a press con-

ference on September 18th Saudi Arabia

showed the wreckage of drones and mis-

siles that it claimed proved Iran’s involve-

ment. America says that these were

launched from a base in southern Iran. Sat-

ellite photos indicate a sophisticated and

precise operation, with clean strikes on Ab-

qaiq’s facilities. It is hard to imagine the

Houthis conducting such an attack with-

out Iran’s help.

If oil output, and by extension the world

economy, was the first casualty, then the

second was surely Saudi credibility as a de-

pendable guardian of that supply. Last year

Saudi Arabia spent between $68bn and

$83bn on defence (estimates vary), behind

only America and China. Saudi Arabia was

one of the first foreign buyers of America’s

Patriot missile-defence system in 1991 and

now operates six batteries of them.

Yet its ground forces have been hum-

bled by four years of fighting rebels waging

guerrilla warfare in Yemen. And its air de-

fences seem to be just as inept at fending

off conventional threats. To be fair, drones

and cruise missiles are especially hard to

stop, particularly if they overwhelm de-

fences by arriving in large numbers. They

are small and they fly low, hiding from ra-

dar behind the curvature of the earth. And

they are manoeuvrable, so they can skirt

known missile-defence sites. Some reports

suggest the Aramco barrage snuck in via

Kuwait. Saudi air defences are relatively

thin in the eastern province, with most of

its batteries focused to the south on the

threat from Yemen.

Even so, Saudi forces seem to have had

only limited success in using their Patriots

against ballistic missiles, which are easier

to spot. The company that makes the Patri-

ot claims that its batteries have batted away

more than 100 Houthi missiles over Saudi

Arabia and the uae. But Jeffrey Lewis, an

expert at the Middlebury Institute of Inter-

national Studies at Monterey, says there is

no evidence that they have intercepted any

missiles. If the Patriot and similar systems

are leakier than assumed, Saudi oil facili-

ties may be worryingly vulnerable to Iran

should the conflict escalate.

America’s standing as the ultimate

guarantor of security in the region has also

been damaged. Mr Trump first said that

America was “locked and loaded” to re-

spond to the attack. Then he prevaricated,

as he had done in earlier incidents, kicking

the ball back to Saudi Arabia, saying he

would wait “to hear from the kingdom” be-

fore acting. The following day he stressed

his desire to make a deal with Iran. On Sep-

tember 18th Mr Trump announced that he

would impose further sanctions. But their

impact will be limited, because the admin-

istration is running out of effective targets.

An aide to the vice-president, Mike

Pence, said that “locked and loaded” was in

fact a reference to American energy inde-

pendence, a prize bit of spin even for Mr

Trump’s White House. The erratic swerves

then continued with Mike Pompeo, the

secretary of state, calling the attack an “act

of war” in a visit to the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia has tried to downplay the

incident at home. King Salman said that his

country has the “ability to respond”—hard-

ly a war cry. Much of the public commen-

tary on the attack has come from oil offi-

cials, not military men. Two days after the

attack the front page of Al-Riyadh, a pro-

government daily, led with a story about

the crown prince attending a camel race.

Coverage of the Aramco incident came fur-

ther down. It emphasised international

support for the kingdom and avoided pho-

tos of burning oilfields.

This seems in keeping with Saudi tradi-

tion. For decades the kingdom was conser-

vative in its foreign policy and shunned the

use of hard power. Under the previous

monarch, King Abdullah, it would have

been unthinkable for Saudi Arabia to con-

duct a military strike without America’s

full support.

Times have changed. The crown prince,

Muhammad bin Salman, has ploughed

ahead with a ruinous war in Yemen despite

deep misgivings in Washington and other

Western capitals. He has also worked to

cultivate a new Saudi identity, one rooted

in muscular nationalism instead of Islam.

Officials in the Gulf have warned for

months that the kingdom would eventual-

ly have to retaliate against Iran for the

seemingly endless string of drone and mis-

sile attacks on its facilities.

Yet Saudi Arabia remains hesitant to

pick a fight with a foe that can fight back.

The experience of its air force in Yemen is

not encouraging. Air strikes by the Saudi-

led coalition have killed thousands of civil-

ians, despite Britain and America provid-

ing precision munitions from their own ar-

senals and targeting assistance in a bid to

reduce “collateral damage”. Iran, which op-

erates the Russian S-300 air defence sys-

tem, would be an even harder target for

Saudi warplanes. (Vladimir Putin, in a sub-

lime bit of political trolling, suggested on

September 16th that Saudi Arabia might

want to buy the same system, while Mr

Rouhani chuckled on a stage next to him.)

The kingdom does have its own arsenal of

Western-built cruise missiles, but their

Red

Sea

IRAN

EGYPT

OMAN

BAHRAIN

KUWAIT

LEBANON SYRIA

IRAQ

TURKEY

QATAR

UAE

SAUDIARABIA

ISRAEL

Tehran

Riyadh

Khurais

Abqaiq

JORDAN

Houthi

controlled

YEMEN

The

Gulf

Gulf of Aden

Strait of

Hormuz

Sana’a

Abu Dhabi

Oil pipeline

500 km

Iran takes aim