Reza Sanati* The National Interest
When Prince Turki al-Faisal suggested last year that the House of Saud would join in the U.S.-led sanctions against Iranian oil, by seeking to displace Tehran’s oil exports from the global economy, he was not referring to a novel idea. Indeed, Saudi Arabia has led two prior oil wars against Iran.
As detailed in Andrew Scott Cooper’s The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East, the first Saudi oil war against Iran was intended to weaken the Shah’s modernization programs. The Saudis feared Iran’s rise as a regional power, and wanted to carve out space for independent decision-making in OPEC, which at the time was dominated by Iran.
As the Shah was extremely dependent on high oil prices for his ambitious goals, the Saudis grasped that dissipation of oil prices via increased global supply would be Iran’s Achilles’ heel. As Cooper chronicles, the Saudis ultimately convinced Washington to go along with their plans, facilitated by the U.S. domestic concern about high oil prices. Near the end of the Nixon administration, the Saudis started to flood the market.
