Israel Analysts vilify Iran in disaster laden US-Saudi Oil and Weapons Greed Conspiracy

Here is an interesting piece from The Israeli Times. While its main purpose is clearly vilification of Iran and fear mongering, it also points to the ‘vulnerability’ of the Saudi Oil Supply and reliance there on. The vulnerability is in the foolish reliance on a single point of failure in the Western oil supply-chain. This model of greed uses the intersection of cheap oil and the cost to secure it. The weapons profiteers enjoy a windfall as the US Weapons Sales hit records in the necessity to protect it. Phlipn.

How Iran could get Carte Blanche in the Middle East — without a nuclear weapon
By Mitch Ginsburg – 28 August, 2012 – The Times of Israel

A cyber attack earlier this month highlighted the vulnerability of the Saudi oil industry, on which so much of the world depends. A recent simulation showed that a full-scale terror attack at Abqaiq, where Saudi Arabia processes six million barrels of oil a day, would hugely bolster Iran and bring economic ruin to parts of the world.

Saudi Aramco, a corporation worth hundreds of billions of dollars and the world’s largest producer of oil, came under cyber attack on August 15. A sophisticated malware weapon destroyed 30,000 of the company’s computers.

In a message on an online bulletin board the attackers called themselves the “Cutting Sword of Justice,” a group unknown to cyber security experts, and said that the attack was retribution for “oppressive measures” taken by Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. The group specifically cited Saudi involvement in Syria and Bahrain — two countries where the Saudi government has reportedly aided Sunni factions in their struggle with the Alawite regime and the Shiite majority, respectively.

Officials at Saudi Aramco said this Sunday that “our core businesses of oil and gas exploration, production and distribution from the wellhead to the distribution network were unaffected and are functioning as reliably as ever,” according to Reuters. It said that the attack had come from “external sources” and that the investigation was ongoing.

This wasn’t the first time that the Saudi oil industry was targeted. Six years ago, Saudi Aramco dealt with a more direct attack. On February 24, 2006, at 3 p.m., a car driven by a suicide bomber exploded at the gate of its Abqaiq oil facility. A second car, loaded with 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate as well as unknown quantities of high-grade explosives, crashed through the hole made by the first car and hurtled toward the heart of the oil facility, in the desolate, parched, Shiite-majority Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.

Abutting one of the world’s largest oil fields with proven reserves of 17 billion barrels, Abqaiq processes two thirds of all Saudi Arabian crude oil. More than six million barrels flow daily through the facility. There the gas components of the oil are stabilized and made safe, stripped of sulfur (made “sweet”), and readied for transportation.

Saudi national guardsmen and a squad from the elite Special Emergency Forces stopped the second car a mile inside the facility, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. Several guards were killed in the initial explosion. The damage to the facility was minor; the Saudi Interior Ministry said the sum total of the damage to the site was “a small fire.” Even so, the price of oil, in a market hypersensitive to risk, rose by two dollars a barrel.

Like this month’s cyber attack, the 2006 terror attack, launched by the subgroup called Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, was largely unsuccessful and caused no long-term damage. But the two strikes hinted at the vulnerability of the Saudi oil industry, on which so much of the world depends.

Earlier this year, a group of international experts at the Herzliya Conference imagined a very different scenario — a far more drastic one — in which a sophisticated attack on Abqaiq was directed by Iran and carried out from within. In the simulation, a series of explosions, along with a cyber-weapon, crippled the facility.
An illustration of Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities and shipping routes (Photo credit: Courtesy: Institute for Policy and Strategy and the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya)

An illustration of Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities and shipping routes (Photo credit: Courtesy: Institute for Policy and Strategy and the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya)

The results of this simulated attack, detailed here in full for the first time, were profoundly disturbing. The price of oil skyrocketed to over $200 per barrel. The House of Saud, and the territorial integrity of the kingdom, were existentially threatened. Saudi Arabia’s neighbors — Jordan, Iraq, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman — were destabilized. Developing countries that use oil for electricity were propelled into war, both civil and external.

And Iran, the world’s third-largest producer of oil, authoritatively recognized as the perpetrator of the attack, reaped the rewards, its influence growing throughout the Middle East as the demand for oil outpaced the supply, and the Shiite populations in the Gulf — increasingly unrestful throughout the Arab Spring revolutions — rose up in arms.

“The simulation showed that global over-reliance on Saudi oil and our over-reliance on Saudi stability, would give Iran, in the case of such an attack, carte blanche in the Middle East — and that’s without a nuclear weapon,” said Tommy Steiner, the author of the report and a senior research fellow at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. “Even small-scale meddling” — Sinai-style vandalism along the 11,092 miles of pipeline that crisscross the desert kingdom — “would be enough to significantly increase Iran’s standing.” …more