Following a drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil refinery installations on Sept. 14, tensions have soared in the Middle East, stoking fear that a fuse has been lit on a regional war. Houthi rebels, operating out of neighboring Yemen, took credit for launching the drone attack which crippled more than half of the Saudi’s oil output, five percent of the global oil supply.
President Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo quickly accused Iran of being responsible for the attack, but provided no evidence to support that charge, which was denied by the Iranian government. Officials in Tehran allege that the allegations are being used to justify a future attack. Mr. Trump initially announced to the world that the U.S. was “locked and loaded” to respond to the attack, but later appeared to step back from imminent U.S. military action, that would likely disrupt world oil supplies.
Since 2015 Yemen’s Houthi rebels have been engaged in a deadly war with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, receiving logistics and weapons support from the U.S. The conflict has killed between 50,000 and 100,000 people and is considered by the UN to be the most dire humanitarian crisis in the world today. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Matthew Hoh, senior fellow with the Center For International Policy who in 2009 resigned his position with the State Department in Afghanistan in protest of the escalation of the Afghan War by the Obama administration. Here he discusses the attack on the Saudi oil fields and the dangerous consequences of a regional war.
MATTHEW HOH: It’s very dangerous what we’re seeing right now, whether or not the Iranians are involved. I doubt they were. The Houthis had been launching all types of drone attacks for the last couple of years into Saudi Arabia. They have technology from different places. They do receive some support from Iran.
But to say that the Iranians were behind this attack is really – I don’t believe there’s really gonna be any evidence of that. But it’s very, very dangerous what we’re staring into. Right now in a sense of the entire region, (it’s) already awash in violence and chaos. I mean, from Libya all the way east to Pakistan. Literally every nation there has been touched by the incredibly destructive warfare, at least horrible terror attacks. You know, even in Iran, they have suffered multiple terror attacks over the last 20, 30 years that have claimed the lives of as many as 10,000 people total. So it’s something that’s not really talked about too much. But what we’re looking at now with the possibility of major war between say Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.S. against Iran is something that’s really disconcerting and very, very troubling.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Is there an opportunity with this escalation of tension between the United States, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iran? Is there an opportunity to orchestrate some talks here to end the war in Yemen and reduce the tensions all over that region?
MATTHEW HOH: You know, I would certainly hope so. You know, it’s curious that this attack occurs – just the timing of it –because there had been conversation last week about President Trump possibly meeting with either the foreign minister of Iran or the president of Iran in order to try and maybe hammer out some new agreement. That would be of course, something that will be really startling to see based upon so much of the Saudi and the Israeli positions towards Iran and the way that the U.S. government has often (been) so beholden to those two nations. But President Trump is a president unlike any we’ve ever had before. And there have been people saying that he’s very interested in receiving a Nobel Peace prize. But it’s really quite remarkable, for all that we put into understanding organizations and all that we put into understanding international affairs, world events that it comes down very often to the whims of just one or two or three people controlling the destinies of so many.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Military planners at the Pentagon have long warned against a wider war with Iran, comparing it with the U.S. war in Iraq and saying the conflagration that the United States would be involved in a war with Iran would be magnitudes larger and more dangerous if the United States were to engage in a conflict with Iran.
MATTHEW HOH: It’s not the war the Pentagon wants for a variety of different reasons. There are certainly some within the Pentagon that do want the war, but if you look at how the different armed services structure themselves, the Army is more interested in Russia right now because they like to have their tank divisions and their cavalry regiments in Europe to fight the great land battle. God help us if that ever happens. The Navy and the Air Force are more interested of course in a confrontation with China because that requires long-range bombers, aircraft carriers and submarines – the big ticket items. And Iran doesn’t really do any of that. Under a conflict with Iran, in terms of the first stages of the conflict, I think would be overwhelmingly decided by the United States because our technology and our firepower is so much greater than the Iranians.
The Iranians do have some of what are called asymmetric capabilities. So they may able to, you know, sink an aircraft carrier or so, but quite frankly, the conflict would be very much overwhelmingly in the favor of the United States in the opening phases. But then after that, what occurs? What do you do? Do you invade Iran? You repeat the Iraq war again? That’s absolutely insane. So, it’s not the conflict that many in the Pentagon want. God help us because some in the Pentagon do want it and others want conflict with Russia or conflict with China. But it is something that’s very concerning. And, everybody who’s listening and everyone who has the ability, needs to speak out against it.
For more information visit the Center for International Policy at internationalpolicy.org and Matthew Hoh’s page at internationalpolicy.org/matthew-hoh.
