 |
| Obama meeting Putin after Syria intervention. |
The September 14 attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility in
eastern Saudi Arabia was an Armageddon for the global oil industry because it
processes five million barrels crude oil per day, more than half of Saudi
Arabia’s total oil production.
The subversive attack sent jitters across the global markets
and the oil price surged 15%, the biggest spike witnessed in three decades
since the First Gulf War when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, though the
oil price was eased within days after industrialized nations released their
strategic oil reserves.
In order to bring home the significance of the Persian
Gulf’s oil in the energy-starved industrialized world, here are a few stats
from the OPEC data: Saudi Arabia has the world’s largest proven crude oil
reserves of 265 billion barrels and its daily oil production is 10 million
barrels; Iran and Iraq each has 150 billion barrels reserves and has the
capacity to produce 5 million barrels per day each; while UAE and Kuwait each
has 100 billion barrels reserves and produces 3 million barrels per day each;
thus, all the littoral states of the Persian Gulf, together, hold 788 billion
barrels, more than half of world’s 1477 billion barrels proven oil reserves.
Not surprisingly, 35,000 American troops have currently been
deployed in their numerous military bases and aircraft carriers in the oil-rich
Persian Gulf in accordance with the Carter Doctrine of 1980, which states: “Let
our position be absolutely clear: an attempt by any outside force to gain
control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital
interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled
by any means necessary, including military force.”
It bears mentioning that alongside deploying several
thousand American troops and additional Patriot missile batteries in Saudi
Arabia in the aftermath of the Abqaiq attack, several interventionist hawks in
Washington invoked the Carter Doctrine as a ground for mounting retaliatory
strikes against Iran.
Although the Houthi rebels based in Yemen claimed the
responsibility for the September 14 complex attack involving drones and cruise
missiles on the Abqaiq petroleum facility and the Khurais oil field in the
Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and they have UAV-X drones having a range of
1,500 kilometers, Washington dismissed the possibility.
Instead, it accused Tehran of mounting the attack from
Iran’s territory, which is unlikely because Iran would never leave behind
smoking gun evidence implicating Tehran, as the strategically indispensable
Persian Gulf is monitored round the clock by American satellites and
surveillance aircraft. The most likely suspects were Iran-backed militias in
Iraq because the complex attack involving 18 drones and 7 cruise missiles was
staged from the north.
Quoting Iraqi intelligence officials, David Hearst reported
[1] for the Middle East Eye a day after the September 14 attack that the attack
was mounted by the Hashed al-Shabi militia from its bases in southern Iraq.
What lends credence to the report is the fact that in the weeks preceding the
attack, Washington had accused the Hashed al-Shabi militia of mounting another
attack in eastern Saudi Arabia claimed by the Houthi rebels because the
oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia is nearer the Iraq border than it is
to the Houthi stronghold in Saada, Yemen.
Moreover, in the weeks before the attack, the Iran-backed
militias blamed
[2] the US and Israel in August for mounting airstrikes on their bases in Iraq
targeting the missile storage facilities. The missiles were recently provided
to the militias by Iran. It’s worth noting that 5,000 American troops and
numerous aircraft are still deployed in Iraq, therefore the likely culprit
targeting the Iran-backed militias in Iraq was Washington, not Tel Aviv.
Taking cover of the Israeli airstrikes, Washington has
conducted several airstrikes of its own on targets in Syria and Iraq and blamed
them on Israel, which frequently mounts air and missile strikes against Iranian
operatives and Hezbollah militia in Syria and Lebanon, though it has never
conducted an airstrike in Iraq because for that Israeli aircraft would have to
violate Jordanian or Saudi airspace.
Besides the airstrikes on the missile storage facilities of
Iran-backed militias in Iraq, it is suspected that the US air force was behind
a recent airstrike at the newly built Imam Ali military base in eastern Syria
at al-Bukamal-Qaim border crossing alleged to be hosting the Iranian Quds Force
operatives.
In addition to planting limpet mines on the UAE’s oil
tankers and shooting down an American Global Hawk surveillance drone, the
September 14 attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility was the third major attack
in the Persian Gulf against the interests of Washington and its clients. That
the UAE had forewarning about imminent attacks is proved by the fact that weeks
before the attacks, it recalled forces from Yemen battling the Houthi rebels
and redeployed them to man the UAE’s territorial borders.
Nevertheless, a puerile prank like planting limpet mines on
oil tankers can be overlooked but major provocations like downing a
$200-million surveillance aircraft and mounting a drone and missile attack on
the Abqaiq petroleum facility that crippled its oil-processing functions for
weeks can have serious repercussions. Unless Iran got the green light to go
ahead with the attacks from a major power that equals Washington’s military
might, such confrontation would amount to a suicidal approach.
Therefore, the recent acts of subversion in the Persian Gulf
should be viewed in the broader backdrop of the New Cold War that has begun
after the Ukrainian crisis in 2014 when Russia occupied the Crimean peninsula
and Washington imposed sanctions on Russian entities.
In addition, Russia’s membership in the G8 forum was
suspended by the Western powers in March 2014 and Russian President Vladimir
Putin was snubbed at international summits by the Western leaders, by
then-President Obama in particular, an insult that the Russian strongman took
rather personally.
The Kremlin’s immediate response to the escalation by
Washington was that it jumped into the fray in Syria in September 2015, after a
clandestine visit to Moscow by Major General Qassem Soleimani, the wily commander
of the Iranian Quds Force.
When Russia deployed its forces and military hardware to
Syria in September 2015, the militant proxies of Washington and its regional
clients were on the verge of drawing a wedge between Damascus and the Alawite
heartland of coastal Latakia, which could have led to the imminent downfall of
the Assad government.
With the help of the Russian air power, the Syrian
government has since reclaimed most of Syria’s territory from the insurgents,
excluding Idlib in the northwest occupied by the Turkish-backed militants and
Deir al-Zor and the Kurdish-held areas in the east, thus inflicting a
humiliating defeat on Washington and its regional clients.
Moreover, several momentous events have taken place in the
Syrian theater of proxy wars and on the global stage that have further
exacerbated the New Cold War between Moscow and Washington:
On February 7, 2018, the US B-52 bombers and Apache
helicopters struck a contingent of Syrian government troops and allied forces
in Deir al-Zor province of eastern Syria that reportedly
[3] killed and wounded scores of Russian military contractors working for the
Russian private security firm, the Wagner Group.
The survivors described the bombing as an absolute massacre,
and Moscow lost more Russian nationals in one day than it had lost throughout
its more than two-year-long military campaign in support of the Syrian
government since September 2015.
Washington’s objective in striking Russian contractors was
that the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – which is
mainly comprised of Kurdish YPG militias – had reportedly handed over the
control of some areas east of the Euphrates River to Deir al-Zor Military
Council (DMC), which is the Arab-led component of SDF, and had relocated
several battalions of Kurdish YPG militias to Afrin and along Syria’s northern
border with Turkey in order to defend the Kurdish-held areas against the
onslaught of the Turkish armed forces and allied Syrian militant proxies during
Ankara’s “Operation Olive Branch” in Syria’s northwest that lasted from January
to March 2018.
Syrian forces with the backing of Russian contractors took
advantage of the opportunity and crossed the Euphrates River to capture an oil
refinery located to the east of the Euphrates River in the Kurdish-held area of
Deir al-Zor.
The US Air Force responded with full force, knowing well the
ragtag Arab component of SDF – mainly comprised of local Arab tribesmen and
mercenaries to make the Kurdish-led SDF appear more representative and
inclusive in outlook – was simply not a match for the superior training and
arms of the Syrian troops and Russian military contractors, consequently
causing a carnage in which scores of Russian nationals lost their lives.
A month after the massacre of Russian military contractors
in Syria, on March 4, 2018, Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent working for
the British foreign intelligence service, and his daughter Yulia were found
unconscious on a public bench outside a shopping center in Salisbury. A few
months later, in July last year, a British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after
touching the container of the nerve agent that allegedly poisoned the Skripals.
In the case of the Skripals, Theresa May, then the prime
minister of the United Kingdom, promptly accused Russia of attempted
assassinations and the British government concluded that Skripal and his
daughter were poisoned with a Moscow-made, military-grade nerve agent,
Novichok.
Sergei Skripal was recruited by the British MI6 in 1995, and
before his arrest in Russia in December 2004, he was alleged to have blown the
cover of scores of Russian secret agents. He was released in a spy swap deal in
2010 and was allowed to settle in Salisbury. Both Sergei Skripal and his
daughter have since recovered and were discharged from hospital in May last
year.
Nevertheless, the motive that prompted the Vladimir Putin-led
government to escalate the conflict with the Western powers was that the
Russian presidential elections were slated for March 18, 2018, which Putin was
poised to win anyway but he won a resounding electoral victory with 77% vote by
whipping up chauvinism of the Russian electorate after the war of words with
the Western powers.
In the aftermath of the Salisbury poisonings in March last
year, the US, UK and several European nations expelled scores of Russian
diplomats and the Trump administration ordered the closure of the Russian
consulate in Seattle.
In a retaliatory move, Russia also expelled a similar number
of American, British and European diplomats, and ordered the closure of
American consulate in Saint Petersburg. The relations between Moscow and
Western powers reached their lowest ebb since the break-up of the former Soviet
Union and the end of the Cold War in December 1991.
A month later, an alleged chemical weapons attack took place
in Douma, Syria, on April 7, 2018, and Donald Trump ordered a cruise missile
strike in Syria on April 14 last year in collaboration with the Theresa May
government in the UK and the Emmanuel Macron administration in France. The
strike took place little over a year after a similar cruise missile strike on
al-Shayrat airfield on April 6, 2017, after an alleged chemical weapons attack
in Khan Sheikhoun, though both cruise missile strikes were nothing more than a
show of force.
But the fact that out of 105 total cruise missiles deployed
in the April 14, 2018, strikes against a military research facility in the
Barzeh district of Damascus and two alleged chemical weapons storage facilities
in Homs, 85 were launched by the US, 12 by the French and 8 by the UK aircrafts
demonstrated the unified resolve of the Western powers against Russia in the
aftermath of the Salisbury poisonings in the UK a month earlier.
It bears mentioning that the American air and missile
strikes in Syria are not only illegal under the international law but are also
unlawful according to the American laws. While striking the Islamic State
targets in Iraq and Syria, Washington availed itself of the war on terror
provisions in the US laws, known as the Authorization for the Use of Military
Force (AUMF), but those laws do not give the president the power to order
strikes against the Syrian government targets without prior approval of the US
Congress which has the sole authority to declare war.
The Intercept reported
last year [4] that the Trump administration had derived the authority to
strike the Syrian government targets based on a “top secret” memorandum of the
Office of Legal Counsel that even the US Congress couldn’t see. Complying with
the norms of transparency and the rule of law were never the strong points of
the American democracy but the Trump administration has done away with even the
pretense of accountability and checks and balances in the conduct of
international relations.
Footnotes:
[1] Iranian drones launched from Iraq carried out attacks on
Saudi oil plants:
[2] Iranian-backed militia blames US and Israel for attacks
on bases in Iraq:
[3] Russian toll in Syria battle was 300 killed and wounded:
[4] Donald Trump ordered Syria strike based on a secret
legal justification even Congress can’t see:
