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Attacks on Saudi oil facility and the changing landscape of the Middle East

Marxist Theory · 2019-09-14

Core Argument

The article argues that the 2019 attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure exposed a decisive shift in the balance of forces in the Middle East: US imperialism can no longer guarantee the security of its clients through military intervention, and the Saudi regime in particular is revealed as structurally fragile, dependent on US backing it cannot rely upon. The central claim is that Iran, through its network of allied militias, has demonstrated the ability to strike at the heart of Saudi oil production with impunity, calling the bluff of US threats and forcing Washington toward negotiations rather than escalation. The attacks are presented not as an act of aggression but as a defensive response to years of US-backed Saudi and Israeli military operations across the region, and the article insists that the real aggressors are the US-led imperialist bloc, not Iran or its allies.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is grounded in the Marxist theory of imperialism, particularly Lenin's conception of interimperialist rivalry and the uneven development of capitalist states. It draws on the classical Marxist understanding of the state as an instrument of class rule, applied here to the Saudi monarchy: the regime's weakness is explained not merely by military factors but by its internal social contradictions — the artificial unity of a state held together by oil revenue and US patronage, lacking a stable class base or a national bourgeoisie capable of mobilising popular support. The article also deploys a materialist analysis of military power, contrasting the advanced technological forces of the US-Israeli-Saudi bloc with the asymmetric capabilities of Iran's allied militias, and arguing that raw military superiority does not translate into political victory — a point consistent with Engels's writings on the relationship between military organisation and social relations. The concept of "calling the bluff" is used in a distinctly Marxist sense: the US is constrained not by goodwill but by the objective limits of its economic and military power, which the article links to the broader crisis of US hegemony after the defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article is written in immediate response to the 14 September 2019 drone and missile attacks on the Abqaiq oil processing facility and the Khurais oil field, which knocked out 5.7 million barrels per day of Saudi production — roughly 5% of global supply. Oil prices spiked 20% in a single day, the largest single-day jump since 1990. The article situates this event within a series of escalations: the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal (2018), the imposition of "maximum pressure" sanctions, Israeli strikes on Iranian-backed positions in Syria and Iraq, and the Saudi-led war in Yemen. It notes that Trump had pulled back from a planned strike on Iran in June 2019 and had recently fired National Security Advisor John Bolton, signalling reluctance to engage in direct military confrontation. The article connects the attack to the broader economic conjuncture of slowing global growth, arguing that higher oil prices will act as an additional drag on an already fragile world economy. It also highlights the nervousness in financial markets — rising gold and yen prices, falling emerging-market currencies — as evidence of systemic vulnerability.

Where the Argument Continues

The article leaves several threads open. The most significant is the question of what form the deepening crisis of the Saudi regime will take — whether it will lead to internal fracturing, a succession struggle, or a broader popular uprising. The article gestures toward the "terminal crisis facing Saudi Arabia" but does not develop this analysis. Readers should consult later IDOM articles on the Yemen war, the Khashoggi murder, and the Saudi economy under low oil prices. The argument about the limits of US military power is developed further in IDOM's coverage of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Ukraine war. The relationship between oil prices, global economic slowdown, and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is not fully theorised here but is taken up in more general economic analyses on the site. The role of the Houthi movement as a social force — its class composition, its relationship to Iranian state power, and its political programme — is mentioned but not analysed in depth.

Connections

This article should be read alongside Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism for the theoretical framework on interimperialist rivalry and the export of capital. Trotsky's writings on the permanent revolution and the relationship between war and revolution in the Middle East are relevant, particularly his analysis of the "combined and uneven development" of colonial and semi-colonial states. For the specific conjuncture, readers should consult IDOM's earlier articles on the Yemen war, the Iran nuclear deal, and the US withdrawal from Syria. The analysis of Saudi state fragility connects to broader Marxist debates about rentier states and the political economy of oil, which are taken up in works by Michael Klare and in the journal Historical Materialism. The article's treatment of asymmetric warfare and the limits of US military power echoes themes in the Marxist military theory of Engels and, more recently, in analyses of the Vietnam and Iraq wars by Gabriel Kolko and Andrew Bacevich.

Key Quotes

  1. "What we have in the Middle East is a low-intensity military conflict between, on the one hand, a bloc led by the strongest military power on the planet, which keeps pushing, provoking and upending the equilibrium; and on the other hand, a far-poorer and less-advanced country, supported by a network of militias. How is it acceptable for US imperialism and its allies to ravage and murder at will, but unacceptable when someone defends themselves?"

  2. "The weakness of the Saudi regime, and the reluctance of the US to intervene militarily in its aid, have been exposed for all to see."

  3. "Underneath all the pomp and ceremony lies a very fragile base of Royals, Islamic fundamentalist Wahhabis, tribes, ordinary Saudis, Shias and workers: all key constituents of the Kingdom, and all more-or-less bitter enemies of each other. This is the main reason that Saudi Arabia has never waged a ground battle with its own forces, because no force is loyal to the Royal family and the Kingdom."

  4. "Trump and the Pentagon realised that an attack on Iran holds many dangers for US imperialism, and would in any case not be able to achieve much more than a temporary setback for Iran's military."

  5. "Through a surgical strike, [Iran] has shown how easy it is – through its vast network of groups – to hit key facets of infrastructure, which are supposed to be highly secured by US-supplied missile defence systems."

  6. "Seeing the weakness and instability of Saudi Arabia, it is more likely that the western ruling classes will hedge their bets by increasingly supporting other powers, such as Iran and Turkey, as forces of stability in the region."