The Brink

With the Iranian attacks on Saudi, Qatari and Kuwaiti facilities, the war intensifies

Iran was expected to respond to Israeli airstrikes on its South Pars/North Dome gas field, and it did, with its Thursday night attack on Qatari gas facilities, as well as Saudi and Kuwaiti oil refineries. Pakistan condemned these attacks. That was inevitable, considering that it is working for a de-escalation and that it is directly affected by the war, both because of the shock to its economy from the rising price of oil and the prospect of shortages of fuel. However, at the same time, to ask Iran not to respond to the attacks was to be disingenuous. Matters, it seems, have gone beyond merely the closure of the Hormuz Strait, which was damaging enough. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel was going to honour US president Donald Trump’s request to refrain from targeting Iranian oil infrastructure, as if his promises could be trusted a single bit. This promise was also made despite a refinery in Haifa having been hit, the first direct damage to Israeli energy infrastructure. Mr Trump may have applied pressure after he realized that he had gone too far, that the conflict could spiral out of control.

Another problem that Mr Trump is facing is that while the US Patriot missile defences have held so far, they are prohibitively expensive. A Patriot missile costs $4 million, and 800 missiles have been fired so far, for a cost of over $3 billion so far. This is apart from the cost of munitions, or of operating the aeroplanes carrying out the missions. Then there was the cost of deploying two carrier groups to theatre. The first six days of the war cost $11.3 billion, according to the administration itself. A prolonging of the conflict wil only lead to further difficulties, what with the global Brent crude price reaching $108 a barrel on Monday.

Not just the combatants or the region, but the whole world, stands at the brink of much suffering and economic destruction. An end to the conflict is thus the only solution to the conflict. However, as Iranian President Masood Pezeshkian has said, there must be international guarantees that there will be no repetition of their acts last July, when they had the same aims, but stopped short. As Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu have shown after that episode, a ceasefire doe not mean peace, but a period of preparation for an even greater assault.