With Saudi Arabia’s attention drawn to the escalating conflict on its southern border, where the Iran-backed Houthis have consolidated their grip on the southern Red Sea coastline, Iran-backed militia in Iraq seized the opportunity to launch a damaging attack against key energy infrastructure deep inside the kingdom. Drone strikes launched from Iraq’s Maysan province around 1,100km away, caused damage to three pumping stations on the 7mn b/d East-West crude oil pipeline on 10 September, forcing a full shut-down.
This was the second major attack on Saudi Arabia’s energy sector to emanate from Iraq in recent months, following the late-July attack on the 7mn b/d Abqaiq processing facility. That attack caused relatively limited damage, but forced Saudi Aramco to implement emergency protocols (MEES, 31 July). The kingdom conducted joint attacks with the US on Iraqi militia positions following the July attack, but this time around agreed that Iraq’s Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi should tackle the issue. The militia groups are so firmly embedded in Iraq’s security, economic and political institutions that the central government will struggle to curtail them, and realistically the only counterparty able to rein them in is Iran. (CONTINUED - 1471 WORDS)
