Report: Gulf States Looking to Protect Oil Assets by Playing Nice with Iran

The Reuters news agency reported on Thursday that Gulf nations are concerned that any escalation between Iran and Israel will implicate them and threaten their oil facilities, leading to attempts to ingratiate themselves with Iran.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was in Doha for meetings with Qatari government officials, while the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – which includes Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates (UAE) – held a meeting intending to give them a platform for conversations with Tehran.

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Saudi media reported that Iranian leaders held meetings with the GCC foreign minister on Thursday centered around the year-long conflict between Israel and Iran-backed terrorist groups that began on October 7, 2023, when the Iranian proxy terror group Hamas invaded Israel and massacred 1,200 people, in addition to committing widespread crimes against humanity. The conflict escalated as Iran activated other terrorist proxies – most prominently the Houthis of Yemen and Lebanese Hezbollah – to attack Israel. Hezbollah has waged months of war on Israel’s northern border, displacing more than 60,500 people in the region. Israel adopted restoring sovereignty to its northern territory as a goal of the war against Hamas and its allies in September and killed the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, on September 27.

Israel has since launched what it described as a limited ground operation in Lebanon to finish off the lower-ranking membership of Hezbollah. Iran, in turn, fired a barrage of more than 100 missiles at Israel on Tuesday, resulting in no casualties and, according to the Israeli government, minimal damage.

Reuters reported Thursday that much of the conversation between Iranian leaders and GCC representatives centered around the latter’s concerns of getting roped into the conflict.

“Gulf Arab states sought to reassure Iran of their neutrality in the conflict between Tehran and Israel in meetings in Doha this week on the back of concerns that a wider escalation in violence could threaten their oil facilities,” Reuters reported, citing two anonymous sources.

“Urgent de-escalation was at the top of the agenda for all discussions taking place at the moment, one of the sources said,” according to the news agency.

Reuters also cited a Saudi commentator, Ali Shihabi, whose assessment of the meeting was similar. Shihabi said that the GGC parties “think it’s unlikely that Iran will strike their oil facilities, but the Iranians are dropping hints they might from unofficial sources.”

Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan met with Pezeshkian in Qatar on Wednesday in what was billed as a conversation on how to continue improving relations. Iran and Saudi Arabia have long been geopolitical rivals, and Iran’s proxies have a history of attacking Saudi oil facilities. In March 2023, however, the Chinese Communist Party abruptly announced that it had brokered a peace agreement between Riyadh and Tehran that facilitated the return of diplomatic representation to their respective capitals. The peace agreement preceded a ceasefire this year between the Saudis and the Houthi terrorists of Yemen, who receive significant funding and backing from Iran.

The Saudi government, Faisal said in the meeting with Pezeshkian, sought to “permanently close the chapter on our differences and focus on resolving issues, developing relations as two friendly and brotherly countries.”

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“We trust in your wisdom and insight in managing the situation and contributing to peace and stability in the region,” Faisal added regarding the escalation against Israel.

Pezeshkian claimed that Iran, despite its decades of genocidal belligerence against Israel, was “not in pursuit of war” with its neighbor, but complained that Israel “terrorized our guests in Tehran during our presidential inauguration.” The president was referring to Hamas “political” chief Ismail Haniyeh dying after his headquarters exploded in Tehran while he was in the city for Pezeshkian’s swearing-in ceremony.

Saudi Arabia endured years of Houthi attacks against its territory. The Houthis seized control of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, in 2014, ousting the legitimate, Saudi-friendly government and starting a decade-old civil war. In response to Riyadh’s support for the legitimate government, the Houthis regularly used drones and missiles to bomb Saudi territory, specifically targeting its oil facilities.

The largest Houthi campaign against Saudi Arabia occurred in March 2022, when they began bombing oil facilities in the Red Sea port of Jeddah. One such attack caused a massive fire at an oil tank facility in Jeddah that created an apocalyptic backdrop for a Formula 1 race the city was hosting that day.

“These types of attacks and that type of escalation during a time when the market is very tight is a real concern for the world for it will have – God forbid – if more escalations happen over time, it might have some impact on supply,” the CEO of Saudi oil company Aramco, Amin Nasser, said at the time.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry separately published a statement stressing “the importance of the international community realizing the gravity of Iran’s continued behavior of equipping the terrorist Houthi militias with the technology of the ballistic missiles, and advanced UAVs with which they target the kingdom’s production sites of oil, gas and refined products.”

The escalation of violence between Iran and Israel is also of great concern to Bahrain and the UAE, the two signatories of the Trump-era Abraham Accords that normalized their diplomatic ties to Israel. Both countries aggressively condemned the October 7 atrocities, in contrast to much of the apathy in the rest of the Middle East and did not immediately comment on the elimination of Nasrallah.

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