Iran vs Saudi Arabia

An Iranian oil tanker was attacked by two suspected rockets off the coast of Saudi Arabia last week.  The incident, not so new to the global audience, is the latest in a series of similar attacks involving oil vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf region.  While Saudi Arabia claims it had nothing to do with the attack, there is a significant chance that Iran might end up blaming the oil-rich gulf kingdom for disrupting its supply activity in the Red Sea corridor.  After all, depending on which side is affected, the suspect is always predictable in this perennial conflict between the two rivals. And going by the rule of the game, Riyadh blamed Tehran for carrying out similar attacks on oil vessels in the Gulf of Oman. In addition to that, Saudi Arabia, which is locked in several proxy wars with arch-rival Iran, has also blamed Tehran for attacks on key oil installations, disrupting global supplies.

Tehran denied the charge, but by briefly turning off the oil taps, Riyadh made a very convincing case against its opponent’s support for the Houthi rebels it is fighting in Yemen. So far, attacks attributed to Iran haven’t resulted in a military confrontation. But the long proxy war between the two adversaries has always been one miscalculation away from a major conflict, and such incidents have the potential of triggering one. In a region rattled by tit-for-tat attacks on tankers and oil installations, both sides need to calculate the global and regional impact of every action they plan to take to subdue the other side.

The region and the world can not afford another war,  which most definitely will have far-reaching consequences.  So countries in the Gulf must collectively work for lasting peace between Saudi Arabia and Iran because that is the only solution to prevent the two sides from clashing openly at a time when the region already has a  myriad of existential problems to address.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 14^th, 2019.

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