Saudi Arabia: Making Excuses

Last Saturday, drone attacks were carried out against two oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. The Aramco oilfield in Buqayq and a processing plant in Abqaiq were shut down after separate attacks. A short time later, Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are fighting Saudi Arabian intervention in their country, claimed responsibility.

The attacks resulted in a drastic reduction of 50% in Saudi Arabian oil export capacity. This, in turn, caused a steep rise in world crude oil prices.

Adding to this worrisome impact are attempts at manipulation by the U.S. government, whose secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, accused Iran of being behind the attacks. The authorities in Riyadh were more cautious, limiting themselves to the assertion that the weapons used in both attacks came from Iran.

Over the weekend, Washington promoted a narrative pointing to the Islamic Republic as being responsible for the attacks. With his usual bluster, President Donald Trump said that the United States was locked and loaded to respond.

Washington’s influence extended to the U.N. envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, who said yesterday in testimony before the U.N. Security Council that the U.S. knows who is behind these attacks. However, he emphasized that it is necessary to push for a political solution to the long-standing conflict in Yemen.

The manipulation is, in any case, not without precedent; the White House has been making up excuses for the escalation of military action against Iran for years. For the Saudi monarchy, meanwhile, this narrative serves a double purpose. On the one hand, it intensifies pressure on Tehran, which has been its regional rival for decades. On the other hand, it shifts the focus away from the conflict in Yemen, where Riyadh has sustained a bloody and indefensible military intervention, which has devolved into the commission of crimes against humanity.

The fact is that for more than four years, Yemen’s President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi has remained in the mostly symbolic office only through Saudi Arabian intervention, in which hospitals, schools and residential areas have been bombed indiscriminately.

In response, the Houthis have carried out attacks of varying scale against objectives located in Saudi Arabia.

To put a stop to this escalation, it should be sufficient for the oil-rich kingdom to take it out of Yemen’s hands. However, the course of events appears to favor the geostrategic interests of Riyadh and Washington, and could lead to an attack on Iran.

The manipulation of the narrative about the sabotage of the Saudi petroleum infrastructure obliges us to remember, in this sense, the lie about weapons of mass destruction which led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

At the time, the overwhelming majority of Western media opted to repeat, uncritically, the U.S. version, thus legitimizing a war that was clearly unjust and violated international law.

It is to be hoped that this time, better judgment will prevail.