As I write, the price of crude oil has risen around 1.5% today on reports of drone attacks damaging Saudi pipeline infrastructure and “sabotage” to ships in the Persian Gulf. (Brent Sweet is up 1.61% and W. Texas Intermediate slightly less at 1.49%). While Houthis in Yemen have claimed responsibiity for the drone attacks, the damage to the shipping is suspicious as the BBC’s Security Correspondent Frank Gardner writes:
Compared with previous attacks on shipping in the Middle East - the USS Cole in 2000, the Limburg tanker in 2002 and more recent attacks off Yemen - the damage done to four tankers off the UAE coast on Sunday is minimal.
There has been no oil spillage, no flames and no casualties. But the timing is both suspicious and dangerous.
Whoever carried out this attack could hardly have been unaware of the rising tensions in the Gulf, with the US dispatching additional forces to the region. It would appear that the anonymous culprit was deliberately trying to ratchet up that tension, possibly provoking a conflict.
Gardner has extensive knowledge of the Middle East and used a walker and wheelchair after being shot in Saudi Arabia while reporting there.
The rising tension has led to Spain withdrawing its warship from the American armada on its way to the Gulf.
Spain’s acting defense minister, Margarita Robles, said on Tuesday that the Spanish frigate Méndez Núñez has been pulled out of a US-led naval group in the Persian Gulf because American authorities have changed the original mission.
Robles insisted that the decision is technical and military, not political, and that Spain respects Washington’s choice. “We respect the decision and when things go back to what was planned with the Spanish Navy, we will resume [the mission],” said the minister. The Spanish frigate will rejoin the fleet once it reaches the Indian Ocean.
Neither the UAE or Saudi Arabia have blamed the sabotage on Iran which took place close to the Emirati coast.
“Saudi reticence to report the incident accurately within their own media channels and the current failure to provide imagery evidence of the attack raises important questions as to the nature of the attack”, said maritime security company Dryad Global in a note to clients.
“It remains unlikely that the risk to safety of vessels and crew will increase significantly in the short term however delays to commercial operations and the potential for interactions with military/militia forces has increased,” the report added.
Ship agencies at Fujairah reported they were unable to substantiate government reports or explain what happened because it was a criminal offence in the UAE to circulate information viewed as harming the emirates’ reputation.
The US government has been very quick to blame Iran and to spin the incident to “fake news” organisations in the USA..
American officials told CBS News senior national security correspondent David Martin that the initial assessment of a U.S. team sent to investigate the incidents was that Iran or Iranian-backed proxies had used explosives to blow holes in the four ships.
- The incidents demonstrated the raised risks for shippers in a region vital to global energy supplies as tensions soar between the U.S. and Iran in the wake of President Trump's decision to pull the U.S. out of the nuclear deal agreed by world powers and to impose harsh new sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
The incidents have, of course, no connection whatsoever with a meeting in Washington last week (/s)
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented a military plan at a meeting of top national security officials last week that would send as many as 120,000 US troops to the Middle East in the event that Iran strikes American forces in the region or speeds up its development of nuclear weapons, The New York Times reported Monday.
The Times said the plan, which does not call for a land invasion of Iran, was ordered in part by national security adviser John Bolton.
How fortunate then that the US floatilla is even now closing in on the Straits of Hormuz which separate Iran from the UAE and Saudi Arabia at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. The report goes on to cast doubt on whether Trump had been informed of Bolton’s plans.
These Straits are important as they mean ships carrying oil from the Persian Gulf can be halted by the simple expedient of threats causing their insurance to rise so high that the owners cannot afford the risk. That is where the Houthi drone attacks on the Saudi pipeline infrastructure come in. They have halted pumping from the East of Saudi Arabia to a port on the Red Sea coast on the West.
The attack on the pumping stations took place early on Tuesday, causing minor damage to one of the stations supplying a pipeline running from its oil-rich Eastern Province to the Yanbu Port on the Red Sea, Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said in a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency (SPA).
The fire that broke out was later brought under control but Aramco stopped pumping oil through the pipeline.
"Saudi Aramco has taken all necessary measures and temporarily shut down the pipeline to evaluate its condition," the SPA statement said.
The damage to the ships was minimal as Frank Gardner remarked but given the “threat” that closure of the Straits could represent, an attack on the pipeline by the numerous drones the Houthis have launched in the past week would seem to be an obvious way of hitting back at the House of Saud.
It does seem awfully like somebody is trying to engineer a war between Iran and American allies and bankers in the Persian Gulf area. Fingers might be pointed at a walrus moustached official in Trump’s administration. I should refute that as after all we all know that no American official would ever falsify information in order to provide an excuse to attack a perceived enemy.