The drone attacks on Saudi Arabian oil refineries on Saturday are a shocking development on multiple levels.
On the plus side, they have been greeted with restraint by the Saudis and their allies in the West, notably the United States. Other than the usual posturing from President Donald Trump – he tweeted “we are locked and loaded” – there appears to be a willingness to hold fire.
But that doesn’t diminish the degree to which the attacks mark a dangerous turn in Mideast politics.
They appear to have been carried out by Houthi rebels in Yemen’s four-year-old civil war. The Houthis immediately took credit for the co-ordinated strikes.
If they are indeed responsible, the rebels have demonstrated that they can carry the war deep into Saudi territory. Saudi jets have been responsible for the bombing of Houthi-controlled hospitals and other critical infrastructure in Yemen since 2015. Saturday’s attacks brought the war home to the Saudi people.
But the United States and the Saudis are pointing the finger beyond Yemen, to Iran. While there is no concrete evidence of direct Iranian involvement, and Tehran has denied it was responsible, it is the main backer of the Houthis, supplying them with weapons, money and intelligence in their fight against Saudi-backed Yemenis.
There are three main takeaways from Saturday’s attacks.
The co-ordinated drone strikes are a reminder that the nature of war is changing. For all its sophisticated weaponry and preparations – the Saudi regime has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the most advanced American arsenal of fighter jets and missiles – Saudi Arabia couldn’t prevent a critical blow delivered by what were apparently a handful of cheap, low-tech drones, allegedly launched by a rebel group based in an impoverished country.
Clearly, the old terms of military engagement no longer stand. The airspace around Saudi Arabia is, in theory, among the most protected in the world. Even so, drones appear to have been able to get past the defences of a key U.S. ally – a game-changer in a region riddled with proxy wars between regional powers.
The attacks also represent the rising audacity of Iran as it stretches its influence. Whether Iran was directly behind the attacks is unclear, but there is little doubt that, if the Houthis have drones, they got them from their friends in Tehran. It’s one more chapter in a long-running regional contest between the Iranians and the Saudis. It’s a contest in which the Saudis, and its Western allies, have been losing ground.
Remember the American invasion of Iraq? A decade and a half later, its chief beneficiary is Tehran. Its allies and proxies now largely run the country.
The Syrian civil war has similarly ended with American- and Saudi-backed rebels in retreat and Iran’s friends, including the enfeebled government of Bashar al-Assad, in control. One of Mr. al-Assad’s main sources of military support is Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia group. Hezbollah is also a dominant political force in Lebanon.
Tehran has established a crescent of heavily armed allies, supporters and dependents running from Afghanistan to the Israeli border.
So while it’s not clear to what degree the strike on Saudi Arabia’s oil production was ordered and carried out by Iran, it’s entirely clear that the attack itself, and the Yemen conflict it comes out of, is related to Iran’s increasing influence in the Mideast. And in this clash for regional dominance between Sunni Saudi Arabia’s conservative monarchy and Shia Iran’s revolutionary regime, the Saudis have been yielding ground and losing face.
Which brings us, finally, to Washington, and its attempts to keep Iranian ambitions in check.
Mr. Trump started his chaotic presidency by pulling out of the international agreement under which Iran pledged to abandon its nuclear ambitions in exchange for the lifting of punishing economic sanctions. He was trying to show toughness, but the results aren’t there.
In the past year, Iran has shot down a U.S. drone and seized a British oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. And now it stands accused of daring attacks on a key U.S. ally, right under the nose of the Americans.
These are not the actions of a country brought to heel by U.S. military might. Mr. Trump’s erratic policies in dealing with Iran are failing, and making an already volatile region all the more dangerous.