Foreign Policy: Attack on oil facilities determines the future of the Middle East

The attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia last Saturday, the implications, and whether energy supplies remain the main factor governing the US relationship with the Middle East, have been criticized by Foreign Policy magazine.

The magazine said in an article by Stephen Cook that Saturday's attacks are the defining moment that will determine the future of the Middle East.

Three core interests
Since the end of World War II, three core interests have shaped US policy toward the Middle East: ensuring the flow of energy supplies from the region, safeguarding Israel's security, and ensuring that no country or group can fight American might to endanger the latter two interests.

In other words, in the words of Cook, oil is behind the US presence in the region, as well as the strategic, historical, moral and political reasons that are justified by the special US-Israeli relationship.

Cook, a researcher specializing in Middle East and Africa issues at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the way President Donald Trump would respond to the attacks would reveal whether Washington still considers energy sources a fundamental national interest and whether the United States is on its way out. From the Middle East, a move that many in the region question.

As soon as the news of Saturday's attacks came to light, the human suffering in Yemen, which bears Saudi Arabia, has become the focus of deliberations among foreign policy experts, along with the level of Iranian influence over the Houthis.

However, the researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations stresses that Washington's quest to ensure that the oil "faucet" open not only in times of crisis, but that all dealings with the region has been focused on ensuring the safe passage of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.

Washington's policymakers have always had to "reconcile" their country's strategic relations with the generals, kings, and presidents who have been harming their people and mocking the values ​​the American citizen cherishes, all for oil.

Another event that Stephen Cook mentioned in his article was the G7 summit in Biarritz, France, last August, when Trump called his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi his favorite dictator.

But Trump's personal admiration for Sisi, despite the embarrassing situation, is not the engine of the two countries' bilateral relationship. He believes that Egypt and the Suez Canal are an important part of the regional system that helps the United States achieve its goals, especially the flow of energy resources Smooth.

But the importance of oil to the United States may certainly change as advances in technology make alternative energy resources, electric cars and battery storage better and cheaper.

Geagea without flour
Turning to the Trump administration's attitudes towards Iran, he said that the Iranians have reasons to believe that the US president is speaking in a loud tone without having the necessary stick to carry out his aims.

No one wants war, Cook said, but if the United States took revenge on Iran when the latter shot down a US drone on June 20 as it breached the Islamic Republic's airspace, the Iranians might have thought twice before taking such a big step. Abqaiq and Khurais oil installations.

But the Iranians wanted these attacks - presumably behind them - to test the US logic of investing in the Middle East for the last 70 years.

"If Trump does not respond militarily to these attacks, the United States should pack up and get back on track," he concludes.