The War for Gulf State Capital
Since Donald Trump kicked off a March weekend by attempting to bomb a country of 90 million people back to the Stone Age, there is a question nobody in the White House has been able to answer: Why go to war with Iran? The shifting set of justifications has been pretty comical to watch, whipsawing from liberating the Iranian people to self-defense from Iranian attacks to preventing nuclear capability after a breakdown in negotiations (which was apparently not true) to payback for the 1979 revolution to the complicated tale that Iran would hit U.S. targets anyway once Israel struck first, so we might as well preempt that and get the volley of munitions started early.
But in a press conference on Monday, Trump quietly hit on another rationale, one that may have more truth behind it than the others. “I believe upon information and belief,” Trump began, spitting out a phrase he’s probably seen 100 times in the defamation lawsuits he routinely files against anyone who dares to criticize him, “I believe that [Supreme Leader Khamenei] was going to … they were gonna take over the Middle East. They were looking to take over the Middle East.”
Now that’s a new wrinkle: The war was designed to prevent Iranian regional aggression, apparently. That certainly appeals to the regional combatants, most prominently Israel. But on the day of the attack, the remaining husk of The Washington Post suggested that it was not only Israel pressuring Trump into war, but also Saudi Arabia. “Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made multiple private phone calls to Trump over the past month advocating a U.S. attack, despite his public support for a diplomatic solution,” the Post conveyed. MBS and his brother (the Saudi defense minister) were allegedly claiming that Iran would grow ever more dangerous unless it was hit with more force than last year’s one-off strikes on its weapons facilities.
There’s no way to verify this; the story had only anonymous sources. And back in January, the Saudis were adamant that their airspace would not be used in any Iranian attack—a pledge they’ve apparently continued to make in recent days. But there’s a little logic to the idea that the Sunni Muslim contender for Middle East dominance would at the very least not be upset by the devastation of the leading Shiite opponent.
Under Benjamin Netanyahu, of course, Israel has designs on a wider regional footprint as well, along with an American patron that will stand with them regardless of the occupant of the Oval Office. During the first Trump administration, Israel and Persian Gulf states were joined together in the Abraham Accords (an imminent accord between Israel and the Saudis that Hamas was determined to stop is reputed to have been the motivation for the October 7th attacks, and thus led to the destruction of Gaza). Israel and the Gulf states have been sharing military intelligence and security cooperation, facilitated by U.S. Central Command. So the question of whether Israel or Saudi Arabia prodded Trump into war may not be an either/or, but a both/and.
If Saudi Arabia did maneuver to start this war, it has been, at least on the surface, a total disaster for them, drawing counterstrikes from the Iranians that they’ve condemned and difficulties getting their oil out of the Strait of Hormuz. Arab states don’t have enough weaponry to sustain defenses against Iranian attacks, meaning the damage could get worse. Qatar, a major global supplier of liquefied natural gas, has had to sudden-stop their deliveries. (Which is good for U.S. LNG operators, a fact likely making the Qataris seethe.)
The bubble of the idle rich living it up in Dubai or other Gulf hot spots has been punctured, maybe permanently. Meanwhile, the impact of strikes in Bahrain, where a Sunni ruling class leads a majority-Shiite population, has been violent protests by pro-Iran demonstrators, in an echo of the Arab Spring uprisings from 15 years ago.
Rich and powerful people doing stupid, self-defeating things is a highlight reel of the 21st century. But I do think this is the beginning of an emerging trend. Where America has habitually fought wars for scarce resources like oil, we’re moving into a new stage I would call a war for global capital.
Even if Saudi Arabia and its neighbors didn’t outright stump for war with Iran, the Gulf state-industrial complex is influential enough in Washington to have for years contributed to the overhyping of Iran as an existential threat to America and everyone else on the planet. There has been an endless geyser of oil cash to push this narrative, as well as to seed those sympathetic to it into the American corporate and political elite.
It is almost impossible to name a consequential business transaction in this millennium that didn’t have some Gulf state sovereign wealth fund involved. They are heavily intertwined with the banking industry, media and communications, and most recently artificial intelligence. The Paramount–Warner Bros. deal wouldn’t have happened without equity stakes from the Persian Gulf. CEOs flock to conferences in Doha and Dubai like they’re Springsteen shows at the Garden, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has the pull to recreate the Just for Laughs festival in Riyadh. Every other day, it seems, Trump is announcing some absurdly large foreign direct-investment deal with the Saudis or the Emiratis or the Qataris; while these are mostly vaporware, they exist in Trump’s brain as evidence of a real relationship, and something he must deliver on.
Global elites have been frankly hypnotized by this $5 trillion in wealth. That’s how a U.S.-based journalist being hacked to death by Saudi goons has been conveniently forgotten. And similarly, the Gulf state appetite for war didn’t have to be direct to be effective.
But those same Gulf states apparently believed that they could stoke aggression against Iran cost-free, that their gleaming cities in the desert could never be drawn into conflict, that they could pay someone else, literally or figuratively, to fight their battles. A week into the Iran war, that has proven to be monumental hubris.
The U.S. seems desperate to draw the Gulf states deeper into the war. But as a result of the pressure on their domestic budgets—from lost tourism dollars, added military expenses, and loss of revenue from shipping closures—the Gulf states might have to reverse one of the very foundations of their international power: overseas investments. The Financial Times reports that future commitments could be revoked, using force majeure clauses triggered by acts of war. In other words, Trump’s decision to strike Iran, regardless of why, could upend the foreign subsidies that at least he thinks are keeping the U.S. economy moving.
If the Epstein class started a war, as Matt Stoller described the loose affiliation of those with wealth and privilege who see the Iranians as an impediment to their interests, then they were unprepared for what war would look like outside of their email and social media feeds. Reality is a hard thing to escape.
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