The Economist USA - 21.09.2019

(Barré) #1

52 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
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