Things in the Middle East are about to get worse. For the past few years, to Americans, the Middle East has been this weird region of war and dictatorships that seems so far away from regular life. And in that depiction the Americans have been, not incorrectly, one of the primary instigators of the violence. And while the Americans have started war(s) in the Middle East in that time it has also been the guarantor of peace. The Americans have been keeping the two largest powers in the region from an all out war since it would mean the decimation of the international oil market (Faux). So let us meet these titans of oil: Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Sand and the Saudis:

The first step to understanding any dispute between two nations is to understand their geography. That being said, sand is terrible. People were not meant to live in the desert. It is hot, there is limited water, nothing edible grows in large numbers, and there is sand everywhere. Needless to say, but large centralized armies did not typically survive most of their ventures into deserts and so most of these regions were left to light traveling nomadic peoples (Mullins). Saudi Arabia is no exception. The center of the Arabian peninsula had only formed as a single unified state a few times in the past, and even then it was as a part of a larger empire. But in the 1920’s the House of Saud was given a chance to unify the region and they took it (The Saudi Arabian Embassy). And no one would have cared about a rump warlord conquering the desert, except a few years later the single largest and best oil reserve in the world was discovered under its sand (Blas). The Gwar Superfield is one of the largest single oil fields in the world and has been financing the country for decades (Blas). The Americans saw the massive oil field and knew that they would need oil to fuel their new alliance after the Second World War so they forged a relationship with the Saudis over the course of the 1940’s. And the Americans were big buyers (Blas).

Modern Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia can be described as a totalitarian monarchy (Ochsenwald). It is totalitarian since it has a single monarch who has complete control over all aspects of the state (Ochsenwald). Today Saudi Arabia is one of the wealthiest states on the planet (Umoh). Its sovereign family are one of the richest in the world and they use that wealth to maintain their power (Umoh). Saudi Arabia is one of the most comprehensive welfare states and they do this to placate their potentially rebellious population (Jones). See, the geography of the region naturally creates a fractured society that has more local commonalities than national ones, but the massive expenditures on welfare helps maintain a dependence on the Monarchy. But there are those that simply want nothing to do with the totalitarian monarchy, and resist (Jones). For those the Saudis also use their wealth to purchase top of the line military technology from the U.S. And so the Saudis maintain one of the largest military budgets in the world while being directly engaged in zero international conflicts (Jones). Thus on one side of the Gulf there is a fantastically wealthy militaristic monarchy with a discontented population governed by a radically conservative Islamic principles, and on the other side there is much of the same.

Persia’s Past:

The Persian Empire was one of the first to experiment with a large multinational state, and it turned out pretty well for them. Until it collapsed (Editors of History.com). And so the cycle of Persian history exposes itself. The Persian core territory is intensely mountainous interspersed with small valleys (Afary). Thus the core is very hard to consolidate, but it simultaneously is very valuable land. So whenever the core becomes too unstable, the state has to retreat inwards to put down rebelion. But when the core is subdued, the state expands into the lands of rivers and riches. Achemid, Sassanid, Safavid, and Afsharid Empires all gained total control of Persia’s core before expanding out (Afary). Unfortunately for the native Persians the core was not stable when the British landed, and they didn’t exactly help.

Oil in Them There Hills:

Across the Gulf, the Persians were having a different relationship with its oil, specifically a very British relationship (Kinzer). The Persians discovered millions of barrels on their coastal region in the late 19th century and sold it to the British for penneys since this oil thing couldn’t possibly be that big a deal (Kinzer). For almost a century the Persians, who then became Iranian, became the British Empire’s one stop shop for oil (Kinzer). But empires rise and empires fall, and by the end of World War 2 the British Empire had begun to fall with a new American Empire on the rise. The Americans struck a deal with both the Saudis and the Iranians for access to their oil because the Americans needed to fuel the single largest international alliance the world had ever seen (Beehner). And s0 the Gulf has been powering the U.S. and its allies for the past seventy years (Beehner). But no relationship is without drama, and the Iranians soon brought it.

America’s Achilles Heel:

In 1979 the Iranian Revolution began seeing the Shah overthrown and the formation of a hyper-conservative Islamist government. This government soon became hostile to the U.S. which put them in a little bit of a pickle (Beehner). Various agreements with various countries had made the Persian Gulf the primary export lane for oil and Iran is the only local country with the capacity to blockade it by using its geographic location near the Strait of Hormuz. So the oil that fueled the U.S. and its allies would be in constant threat with this new government, so the U.S. maintained hostilities (Beehner). Sanctions, CIA actions, and threats of war were the norm for the U.S.-Iranian relationship. Thus the Iranians were able to stabilize the Persian core, but, due to the U.S., were never able to break out. But that is beginning to change.

Religious Difference:

For those of you who don’t know, there are two major branches of Islam, Sunni and Shiite, and they despise each other. Saudi Arabia is Sunni and Iran is Shiite. This seems to yet another reason for these two states to hate each other, but it is not exactly correct. The differing faiths is by no means helping the situation, and both of the states in question have criticized the other for their faith, but I would categorize it less of a reason and more of an excuse. The difference being that a reason would exist aside from any other criterion and an excuse is based on a pre-existing reason. Saudi Arabia has friendly relations with Bahrain a Shiite majority country (El Yaakoubi). Saudi Arabia and Iran are antagonistic to each other for geopolitical reasons then excuse the animosity with religion.

What Happens when America Leaves:

The U.S. got involved in the Gulf not for itself, to begin with, but to fuel Europe. With the end of World War 2 it was already very clear that modern economies need oil, and the only major oil reserves in Europe were in Romania and Russia both of which were no longer options since Stalin closed the curtains (Hendrix). So the Americans brokered deals with countries in the Middle East to fuel Europe so they could help contain the Russians (Hendrix). But, in case it has gone unnoticed, the Soviets fell almost thirty years ago, and with it America’s interest around the world crumbled. It has been a slow process, but American international interest has begun to fade away and the Middle East will feel it. And the Americans no longer need the oil for themselves as the shale revolution has set America for energy independence by 2020 (DiChristopher). So, with American need for oil imports almost non-existent and a the Trump Presidency’s bellicose attitude towards its allies there is no incentive to stay in the Gulf.

Middle East Without the Americans:

Operating on the probability that the Americans will leave the Middle East militarily within the next decade, based on President Trump’s removal of American troops from Syria and working to end the Afghan war, there are certain predictions to be made. Firstly, an expansive Iran. Iran will seek to do what all Persian states have done and will seek to dominate the Fertile Crescent (Afary). They can achieve this by putting Shite pro-Iranian governments in power in the countries in question, like the ones they supported in Syria and Iraq, and use these friendly governments to achieve local dominance. Second, a terrified Saudi Arabia. There is nothing in Saudi Arabia but sand and oil, and, with a resurgent Iran, the Saudi’s oil exports become endangered. Since Iran is the only local country that has the capacity to blockade the Gulf there would be nothing the Saudi’s could do to stop them without U.S. support. Thus the Saudi’s have adopted less conventional methods, namely funding terrorist organizations (Al-Thani). The idea being that if they can’t foment enough of a conflict to oust Iranian influence then they will fund a conflict that will destroy the country Iran is trying to influence. For example, Yemen’s government is run by a Sunnis and is an ally of Saudi Arabia, so when a Shiite rebellion broke out the Saudis gave massive funding to Yemen and takes an active role in the war (Al-Thani). Similar conflicts are occuring in Iraq and Syria where the Saudis are not trying to win the war outright but rather to make the states ineffective as allies (Marcus). These proxy wars, reminiscent of the Cold War, are the two states going through the early stages of a fight for local dominance in a important region in a world where the arbiter of peace, in general, has left the scene (Marcus). But the first stage is not the only stage.

Escalating Conflict:

A final near complete American removal from the Middle East is looking more and more inevitable every day since every strategic and economic links to the region the U.S. had have broken away all, almost, at the same time. With this there will be no larger power with the naval capacity to keep the Gulf open indefinitely, and Iran can operate with impunity (Woody). Saying what would come next is a tricky idea, but here are some best guesses: 1. Iran Closes the Gulf, 2. Saudi Strikes, and 3. An Invasion.

Iran Closes the Gulf:

The idea that Iran would close the Gulf is not crazy. They are currently thinking about closing it on a military power vastly its superior that it has no hope of winning a conventional war with, Iran would not hesitate to close it in an Americanless world. The Saudi oil, along with the oil of Saudi allies like Qatar and Bahrain, would be ostensibly cut of from the world unless they enlarge one of the largest oil pipelines in the world in the second worst possible geography. That is to say that it is not impossible. There currently exists a pipeline across the Arabian Peninsula, called the Trans-Arabian pipeline, that, while not able to move all of Saudi oil and currently is offline, could be reopened enlarged to keep the oil flowing and the money rolling in (Britannica). The Saudis have some of the largest sovereign wealth in the world and are terrified so will try anything to survive (Umoh). The expansion of the Trans-Arabian pipeline would be massively expensive, and massively time consuming, but possible.

Saudi Strikes

The Saudis have been buying American fighters since we have been making them en masse, thus they have a lot of the best the Americans have to offer, and the Americans offer the best (Brimelow). The Iranians, on the other hand, do not have access to the same quality of aircraft or the same quantity (Mizokami). The Saudis will have every opportunity to strike Iran wherever they so wish, and considering that most of Iranian refining happens on the coast (Editors of Eia), where the Saudis can most easily strike, the Saudis can hamper Iranian oil production just as much if not more than the Iranians can hamper theirs since the Iranians have no back door.

An Invasion

Each have the capacity today to almost eliminate the oil production of the other, and considering that oil is the only thing propping up these regimes it is imperative that either one destroys the other. And that means conventional invasion of one from the other. Most likely, Iran would be the instigator seeing as the Saudis have a backdoor option in a pipeline to the Red Sea and Iran has no other option to regain its oil production; however it could also be the Saudis due to unforeseen circumstances. And so then the question becomes whether or not the Saudis are able to hold off an Iranian invasion for long enough for the told on oil production to become so great for them to give up. And that can only be answered with time.

Conclusion:

Two autocratic countries in a part of the world that most of the population is sick of hearing about are on a collision course with each other, so what? Well, for Americans, almost by definition, you won't have to care. It is the American removal from the region that makes any of the rest of this possible, and there is no longer a strategic goal or economic rational to keep American interest in the region and it will fall away. But the rest of the world is not nearly as lucky. Most notably East Asia and Western Europe will scramble for oil across the globe. Some might try to strike a deal with local producers, like Norway or Indonesia, some will try to reopen the Persian Gulf, and some will get nothing. A third of oil production going offline will have adverse effects on the cost of basically everything and the international market will be completely upheaved, but the Americans will feel almost none of it.