Few could argue with U.S. President Donald Trump’s key objective in launching ‘Operation Epic Fury’ against Iran on 28 February — to prevent Iran from ever being able to develop a nuclear weapon. All members of his Cabinet fully backed this aim at the time, as they did the other three: to effect regime change, to critically degrade Iran’s ballistic missile capability, and to neutralise the ability of its proxies, especially Hamas and Hezbollah, to cause mayhem across the Middle East and the world. The degree to which these objectives have been achieved so far is a matter for debate, but what is not is that Washington’s closest Arab allies now harbour deep misgivings over America’s ability to shield them from the Iranian hornet’s nest that U.S. attacks have provoked. This has again made them more susceptible to the soothing assurances from Beijing that it can keep them safe from the terror of Tehran over the long term. This situation, in turn, threatens Trump’s ‘Abraham Accords’ plan that lay at the heart of his Middle East foreign policy, as fully examined in my latest book on the new global oil market order. Several recent moves by leading Middle East power Saudi Arabia underline this threat.

Saudi Arabia’s desire to partner with other countries to expand its strategic oil stockpile marks a seismic shift in policy. Historically, the Kingdom responded to oil demand spikes by simply pumping more crude from its domestic oilfields, drawing down from its own domestic storage, or securing barrels in the international spot and forward markets. However, this announcement signals that Saudi Arabia can no longer rely solely on its own geography and security to guarantee oil delivery. By seeking access to the strategic, government-owned stockpiles of foreign nations — particularly in Asia — Aramco wants to double its overseas storage capacity. That necessitates moving enormous volumes of Saudi oil out of the volatile Gulf region ahead of time and placing it directly into the backyards of its biggest customers. In other words, the Saudis are saying that the physical infrastructure inside the Middle East is too exposed to rely on exclusively, and to ensure seamless supplies in the future, they are transitioning from a model of ‘we will get it when you need it’ to ‘we will store millions of barrels in your country so a local drone strike cannot trigger a global economic collapse.’ In fact, the first such deal was quickly struck by Saudi Arabia on 26 October to store crude oil at Singapore’s Jurong Rock Caverns from the second half of 2027. The caverns can store up to 1.47 million cubic metres of liquid hydrocarbons such as crude oil and condensate.

Whilst sensibly pragmatic on Saudi Arabia’s part, given recent events, this general strategy is disastrous for the U.S.’s image in the Middle East. In recent years, Saudi Arabia has consistently spent tens of billions of dollars annually on American-sourced defence systems, with historical and recent baseline arms agreements valued at roughly USD75 billion a year. While Riyadh has recently allocated roughly USD83 billion per year to its total national defence budget, the U.S. remains its primary provider, accounting for nearly 80 percent of all Saudi weapons imports. However, none of this has counted for much in the face of sustained attacks from Iran. Worse still was that back in September 2019, Iran had already signalled it had no qualms about authorising its Yemen-based Houthi terrorist proxy to attack key Saudi Arabian oil targets, with drone and missile strikes against the Abqaiq and Khurais oil processing facilities. At the time, these two facilities represented around 50 percent of Saudi Arabia’s oil production, or about 5 percent of the global oil supply, so the attacks caused an immediate spike of up to 20 percent in global oil prices and were considered one of the most strategically significant energy-infrastructure strikes ever recorded. Riyadh consequently increased its investment in U.S. defence technology aimed at nullifying these threats, including Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors, Patriot defences, and early-warning radars. Despite this, Iranian proxy forces in Iraq and the Tehran-backed Houthis launched repeated successful drone strikes targeting the East-West Pipeline. Meanwhile, waves of Houthi ballistic missiles and explosive drones struck deep inside the Saudi homeland, with the primary targets being vital energy nodes, including an Aramco facility and the major Rabigh refinery. A similar pattern manifested itself with other U.S. allies in the region. Having bought vast amounts of American defence equipment beforehand, Iranian strikes destroyed or disabled the AN/FPS-132 early-warning radar in Qatar, multiple AN/TPY-2 THAAD radars across the region, the AN/TPS-59 radar in Bahrain, and a string of MQ-9 Reapers. This exposed the uncomfortable truth that the U.S. could not adequately defend these states, either directly with its own forces or indirectly through the systems it had sold them.

A tell-tale sign of Saudi Arabia’s increasing lack of trust in being reliant on the U.S. for its security came in on 7 August when it announced the formation of the ‘Makkah Defence Alliance’, together with Turkey, and Pakistan. It is modelled around the core collective defence principle enshrined in NATO’s Article 5 — that is, that an armed attack on one member shall be considered an attack against them all. Saudi Arabia brings deep financing ability and a vast network of regional intelligence contacts to the grouping. Turkey — itself a member of NATO and tied into the U.S. and its key Western allies — has advanced military hardware, high-tech defence equipment, and a well-established production line for artillery and drones to the alliance. And Pakistan provides a huge frontline military and nuclear weapons. Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif stated that its ‘full military capabilities’ would be available under their defence agreements. Subsequently, it was clarified that the Alliance pact is strictly defensive and conventional — but it still has the weapons.

So far, the Alliance has not achieved much, and its future effectiveness looks uncertain at best. What is not uncertain is that China could stop any attacks on all these Arab states with a few words to Iran: such as, ‘stop doing all this, or we will immediately cease buying oil and gas from you, and will stop supplying you with critical materials, equipment, and expertise that you need to keep fighting the U.S. and its allies’. Up until recently, as analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iraq — among others — had all heavily leaned into Beijing’s sphere of global influence, and the situation looks ripe for the same to happen again.

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