Saudi oil attack part of dangerous new pattern
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The assault on the beating heart of Saudi Arabia’s vast oil empire follows a new and dangerous pattern that’s emerged across the Persian Gulf this summer of precise attacks that leave few obvious clues as to who launched them.
Beginning in May with the still-unclaimed explosions that damaged oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, the region has seen its energy infrastructure repeatedly targeted. Those attacks culminated with Saturday’s assault on the world’s biggest oil processor in eastern Saudi Arabia, which halved the oil-rich kingdom’s production and caused energy prices to spike.
Some strikes have been claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have been battling a Saudi-led coalition in the Arab world’s poorest country since 2015. Their rapidly increasing sophistication fuels suspicion among experts and analysts however that Iran may be orchestrating them — or perhaps even carrying them out itself as the U.S. alleges in the case of Saturday’s attack.
“Iran can count on public skepticism to a ord it some deniability under any circumstances, but an attack of this magnitude stands a much greater chance of provoking very severe diplomatic and military consequences,” warned Michael Knights, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
For its part, Iran only claimed one attack during this period, the shootdown of a U.S. military surveillance drone it alleges entered its airspace on June 20. It publicly gave medals to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard members who manned the anti-aircraft battery that downed the drone. It separately has acknowledged seizing oil tankers, the most-prominent one the British-flagged Stena Impero on July 19.
However, the attacks on the oil tankers and the Houthi-claimed assaults on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure would match up with previous incidents blamed on Tehran. Experts describe Iran as relying on so-called non-attributable attacks, when blame is difficult to assign given the circumstances.
The reasons for this are severalfold. Since its 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has been unable to purchase sophisticated weapons from the West like its Gulf Arab neighbors. Its air force remains replete with pre-revolution, American-made F-4s, F-5s and F-14s, as well as Soviet fighter jets. The U.S. Navy sank half of Iran’s operational fleet in a one-day naval battle in 1988 amid the so-called “Tanker War.”
While it has built its own missile arsenal, experts say Iran’s armed forces would su er in a head-to-head military confrontation. Launching attacks that can’t be easily linked back to Tehran limits the chance of direct retaliation.
Separately, Tehran has worked to grow a network of proxy forces in the Mideast. Iran backs the Lebanese militant group and political party Hezbollah, which offers it a way to pressure Israel, a longtime foe in the region. Iran has worked to do the same with the Houthis, members of a Shiite Zaydi sect who seized the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014.