The Mideast has its own variety of crazy
humor. The Saudis have been blasting and bombing wretched Yemen, one of
this world’s poorest nations, since 2015.
These US-supported attacks and a naval
blockade of Yemen imposed by Saudi Arabia and its sidekick ally, the United
Arab Emirates, have caused mass starvation. No one knows how many Yemenis
have died or are currently starving. Estimates run from 250,000 to one
million.
The black humor? The Saudis just claimed they were victims of
Iranian `aggression’ this past week after the kingdom’s leading oil treatment
facility at Abqaiq was hit by a flight of armed drones or cruise
missiles. The usual American militarists, now led by State Secretary Mike
Pompeo after the demented warmonger, John Bolton, was finally fired, are
calling for military retaliation against Iran even though the attack was
claimed by Yemen’s Shia Houthi movement.
This
drama came at roughly the same time that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin
Netanyahu, a close ally of US president Donald Trump, vowed to annex
Palestine’s entire Jordan Valley if elected. Not a peep of protest came from the US, which recently
blessed Netanyahu’s annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights while scourging
Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, for annexing Crimea – a Russian possession for
over 300 years.
I
studied US photos of the damaged Saudi oil installations. Its oil tanks appear to be
precisely hit at the same place. After the attack, the Saudis claimed
half of their oil production was knocked out; but a day later, they vowed
production would be resumed within a week. Parts of so-called drones
were shown that appeared way beyond the technological capabilities of Yemen or
even Iran. The missiles may have been supplied by Ukraine.
The
Saudis, like their patron in Washington, have a poor record for
truthfulness. Remember the Saudi denials about the murder of journalist and
Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi? More important, we have been waiting for
more false flag attacks in the Gulf designed to justify a US attack on Iran.
The
pattern of so-called drone attacks against the Saudi oil installations is just
too neat and symmetrical. The Israelis have a strong interest in
promoting a US-Saudi War. The attacks in Saudi came ironically right
after the anniversary of 9/11 that plunged the US into war against large parts
of the Muslim world.
As a long-time military observer, I find it very hard to believe that
drones could be guided over such long distances and so accurately without
aircraft or satellites to guide them. In Yemen, which is
just creeping into the 12th century, changing a
flat tire is a major technological achievement. To date, Iran’s missile
arsenal has poor reliability and major guidance problems.
Adding
to the questions, the Saudis have spent billions on US-made air defense
systems. They failed to protect the oil installations. The
Saudis would have been better off buying air defenses from the Russians, at a
quarter of the US selling price.
Trump
at least showed some wisdom by so far rejecting demands from the neocons that
surround him to launch major attacks on Iran. Blasting Iran would not
serve much purpose and would expose US forces in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Jordan, Somalia, and Syria to Iranian guerilla attacks. Saudi oil
installations – after what we saw last week – are vulnerable.
Attacking Iran, even if just
from the air, risks a much wider Mideast war just as the Trump administration –
which originally campaigned against ‘stupid’ Mideast wars – faces next year’s
elections. But the administration is under intense pressure from its
pro-Israel base to go after Iran.
Bombing Iran’s oil infrastructure would
be relatively easy and has been intensively planned since early
2002. But what next? So-called ‘regime change’ (Washington’s
favorite euphemism for overthrowing disobedient foreign governments) rarely
works as planned and can get the US into horribly messy
situations. The CIA overthrew Iran’s democratic government in
1953 and look where we are today.
Perhaps the attacks on Abqaiq may cause
the reckless Saudi leaders to stop devastating Yemen and throttle back on their
proxy war against Iran which has gone on since 1979. But don’t count on
it.
Eric S.
Margolis [send him
mail] is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new
book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the
Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website.
Copyright © 2019 Eric Margolis