By Manisha Ghosh
On 14th September, predawn time at 3.31am and 3.42am, Saudi Arabia experienced two loud explosions blowed up at Saudi Aramco owned Khurais oilfield and Abqaiq processing facility, destroying pipelines, oil installations and tankers. Although Riyadh experienced small scale attacks on Saudi Oil facilities, but this attack is a much larger intensification: a smack to the jugular of the kingdom’s oil industry.
The explosions head out fires that took many hours to extinguish and caused significant damage, curtailing the production by about 5m barrels a day – nearly half the kingdom’s estimated output of 9.7m barrels and 5% of global production.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group claimed the responsibility of these two drone attacks and they also brazened on the outcome- knocking out more than half the Kingdom’s output. This unverified move of the Houthis escalated tensions in the gulf region and it is expected to raise oil prices. Diving deep into the recent UN reports on Houthis, it was found that the Houthis recently acquired more potent drone technology that has a striking radius of 1500km and Abqaiq falls within about 1,000km of Houthi-held territory in Yemen. Unconfirmed reports also depicts that the Houthis earlier have tried to attack at civilian airports in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Dubai with drones. Since 2015-ousting the Yemeni President, the Houthis are basically fighting a Saudi-led and Western-backed coalition.
However, Washington came up with a new theory and accused Tehran to be the main culprit behind this assault, rather than the Iran-backed Houthis. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo immediately tweeted “Amid all the calls for de-escalation, Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply.” He also said: “There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen. We call on all nations to publicly and unequivocally condemn Iran’s attacks. The United States will work with our partners and allies to ensure that energy markets remain well supplied and Iran is held accountable for its aggression.”
Washington produced satellite photos screening what officials alleged were at least 19 points of bang at the two Saudi energy facilities, including damage at the heart of the Abqaiq plant. The images show consistent impacts with the assail coming from the direction of Iran or Iraq, rather than from Yemen to the south.
The US President, Donald Trump portrayed that his government is “locked and loaded” and prepared to counter agencies, even countries- whosoever carried out this heinous attack, hinting strongly that the US might take this surgical step as a justification for a military strike on Iran. However, he knows that any such attack would bring a momentous risk of escalating the tensions in the Middle East realm which is far forbidden for the Pentagon.
On the other hand, confronting the US accusation, on the very Sunday, Abbas Mousavi, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman straightway dismissed Mr Pompeo’s comments as false, quoting “Such allegations and blind comments are meaningless and not understandable in diplomatic terms,” he also added that the US policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran had become one of “maximum lying”.
The foreign minister of Iran, Mr Javed Zarif also pinged the issue that the US and its allies were “stuck in Yemen because of the illusion that weapon superiority will lead to military victory,” predicting this as a reason of undue allegations on Iran. He also said “What is happening in the region today, which has also worried the world, is in fact because of the wrong policies adopted by the US and the plots hatched by the country.”
Unconfirmed counteraction later shows that An Iranian oil tanker in the Red Sea was hit by two suspected rockets on 11th October, between 5:10 to 5:30am, off the coast of Saudi Arabia’s port Jeddah that further raised fears of additional escalation in the already-volatile Gulf region. This misadventure caused huge oil spillage at the Red Sea and it was suspected that it happened due to any terrorist attacks. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi told “Those behind the attack are responsible for the consequences of this dangerous adventure, including the dangerous environmental pollution caused.”
The National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) said in a statement that no country or organization has taken responsibility of this attack and no country also came forward to assist wrapping up the wreckage. According to the website Tankertrackers, the vessel was the largest-sized tanker, was fully loaded with one million barrels of oil, and “it does the Syria route”, said Basravi. He also noted that “This is the third time in the past six months that an Iranian tanker has been incapacitated in these waters.”
Riyadh, didn’t acknowledged about the incident immediately. The protectorate of the Saudi’s- the US Navy’s 5th Fleet spokesperson, Lieutenant Pete Pagano, briefed that authorities were “aware of reports of this incident.” However, from a renowned private maritime security firm, Dryad Maritime warned “This latest incident – if confirmed to be an act of aggression – is highly likely to be part of the wider narrative of deteriorating relations between Saudi and the US and Iran….It is likely that the region, have being stable for the last month, will face another period of increasing maritime threats, as the Iranian and Saudi geopolitical stand-off continues.”
Michelle Bockmann, an analyst of ‘Lloyds List’ identified that the ship was moving towards Syria- the only open market to sell Iranian oil amidst heavy US sanctions. He quoted, “That really is, along with China, the only market there is for Iranian crude now since the US tightened sanctions in May.” He also identified “We’re seeing geopolitics playing out within the global shipping and tanker markets, and this is just an extension of the instability that we’re seeing in the region.”
In a nutshell, the geopolitics of Middle East, which was further escalated when the US re-imposed sanctions after getting out of the peace treaty has now become very mercurial. Blames and counter-blames of different sides- the US and Iran have stalemated the situation. All the parties, irrespective of its standpoint and agendas should stop this heinous adventures of targeting the oil tankers and refrain from, if not working together, from arousing the warlike situation in the gulf.
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights)
(Image released by the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC), dated 13 October, showing two holes above the waterline)