00:00And as the conflict continues to rage, it is Gulf states that are under near daily attack
00:06from Iran. In the latest news, drones targeted a fuel tank at Kuwait airport, causing a fire.
00:14You can see it in the pictures there, although there were no casualties reported. Now today,
00:18both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia say they have repelled fresh drone attacks also from Iran.
00:26Joining me on the program now is Natasha Lindstad. She's a professor at the University of Essex,
00:32and she's joining me to talk particularly about Saudi Arabia, but about the Gulf states more
00:37generally as this conflict approaches its first month. Good to speak to you. And thanks for
00:43joining us today here on France 24. Thanks for having me. First of all, the New York Times is
00:51reporting that Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, is now pushing
00:56Donald Trump to keep this war with Iran going. It claims that MBS sees this as a moment to destroy
01:05the clerical regime in Iran, thus reshaping the Middle East quite fundamentally. How do you view that?
01:15Well, yeah, that's what's been reported by the New York Times. And this is somewhat different than
01:20what I had heard from when I was talking to Saudi colleagues, Saudi experts that were saying that
01:27the Saudis did not want to get involved at all in this conflict. They were hoping for de-escalation
01:32and were hoping that the conflict wouldn't start in the first place. And seeing that now the Gulf
01:36states have been under attack. With time, this has changed the views of those in Saudi Arabia,
01:43but also in the UAE. The UAE, of course, is the country that has suffered the most, the most
01:47attacks, like over 300 ballistic missile attacks, over 1,700 drone attacks. And Saudi Arabia, of course,
01:54has been attacked as well. And they just now see that they cannot coexist with this hardline Iran
02:00regime. And if the U.S. were just to leave and have some kind of partial victory with the Iranian
02:07regime intact, that's going to make Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states very vulnerable to subsequent
02:14attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, which is where 20 percent of the oil passes through. Now, while
02:20they have built pipelines, both UAE and Saudi Arabia have built these pipelines to pass the oil through,
02:27there's nowhere near as much oil that can pass through these pipelines. So they're really vulnerable
02:32to continued attacks by the Iranians. They're worried that there could be drone attacks as well.
02:38And then the other issue is, what if Iran emerges more like a failed state, something similar to what
02:43happened in Iraq in post-2003? Then there could be all these other violent non-state actors, maybe
02:49coming from the Iran Revolutionary Guards, that could continue to attack Saudi oil refineries and other
03:00vital infrastructure. So what's the best case scenario then, do you think, for Saudi Arabia at this
03:05moment? So according to the New York Times, the best case scenario is that the regime is ended or at
03:13least some sort of pliant regime is in its place that is friendly to the Gulf states in particular.
03:20And so that they no longer fear that there's going to be attacks on their key infrastructure,
03:25particularly in the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, one of the big parts of
03:29Crown Prince bin Salman's economic plan is this vision 2030 that requires a lot of foreign
03:36investment. They want to be an international business hub. They want to attract a lot of
03:40tourism. And all of this is really bad for business. So they think in the short run that
03:46they may be willing to suffer this conflict going on for months. I heard somewhere around nine months
03:50mentioned that they would be willing to withstand if in the end the result is an Iranian regime that is
03:56far more friendly and where they don't feel vulnerable to attack. They want to feel like in
04:00the post-conflict situation, there's some sort of deterrence that has been established, that they're
04:05not worried that their economic interests will be vulnerable.
04:08And if this conflict does go on for another nine months or so, how damaging is this going to be
04:14for
04:15Saudi Arabia in terms of its oil infrastructure and the economy more broadly?
04:22It's definitely incredibly damaging. I mean, there were some experts saying this is one of the biggest
04:27energy crisis that we've ever seen before. And with a country like Saudi Arabia that is so dependent
04:33on oil, of course, this is going to affect their economy. They're going to take a hit. But we've seen
04:38that there have been other countries in the Gulf that have been hit much worse. I mean, namely Qatar,
04:42its economy has been affected the worst. They had this huge attack on one of their refineries that's
04:47going to take three to five years to repair. The UAE, as I mentioned, had withstood the most attacks.
04:54It's countries like Oman and Saudi Arabia that had not been attacked, relatively speaking,
05:00as much. And Saudi Arabia is a much bigger economy that is probably going to be able to weather this.
05:05But what they feel that they can't withstand would be some sort of situation where Iran is either
05:12incredibly aggressive and vindictive or a situation where it's a failed state. And that that will have
05:19longer term consequences on Saudi Arabia's growth plans. And I wonder how much influence you think
05:26Mohammed bin Salman has on Donald Trump on this issue. It has been reported that Trump respects
05:32MBS to some extent that he that he has his ear.
05:37Right. I mean, I would have thought that he would have been able to influence Donald Trump to not
05:42attack Iran. I mean, that's what they were able to do last year when Netanyahu and Israel put on the
05:49table to assassinate the Ayatollah. And it was the Gulf states that were pressuring Trump not to do so
05:56because that would lead to all kinds of instability and all the basically the things that that have just
06:00happened. So we see that while the crown prince bin Salman is very influential, Seoul is Netanyahu.
06:08Just a final question for you, Natasha, you mentioned Qatar. But do you think that Gulf states in general
06:16are aligned with the Saudi point of view right now that they want this conflict to go on long enough
06:21to really destroy the Iranian clerical regime? Or are there some that say, look, we've suffered enough.
06:27It's time to stop. No, I don't think they're aligned. And I also think there are different
06:33views coming from the public who have been absolutely distressed by this, have found this to
06:43be incredibly stressful. And the regimes themselves, I think there will be different opinions between the
06:49UAE and Saudi Arabia on the one hand, who often at times have competed with one another. And some of
06:54the
06:54other Gulf states like Kuwait and Qatar. So they're not completely aligned. You also have Oman, that is
07:02the country that's been the least affected. And they're trying to play some kind of mediator role.
07:06And the press releases, at least that that they have stated that that they're hoping to end this
07:12conflict as soon as possible. All right, Natasha, Lynn Stad talking to us there. She's an expert
07:17on the Gulf region. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
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