From: "Hakki Alacakaptan" <nucleus at superonline.com> Subject: US & SA: Petrodollars, oil, arms, and wahhabism Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 11:04:16 +0200
Excellent analysis in the WP:
Hakki
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A55265-2002Feb10?language=printer>
Oil for Security Fueled Close Ties But Major Differences Led to Tensions
By Robert G. Kaiser and David Ottaway Washington Post Staff Writers Monday, February 11, 2002; Page A01
Second in a series
The worst day in Saudi-American relations was Oct. 20, 1973, when Saudi King Faisal joined an Arab oil embargo against the United States. In a matter of days, the global oil market was thrown into chaos. Americans waited in long lines to buy gasoline. Within weeks, the price of oil more than tripled.
Not for the first or last time, the United States had misread the situation inside Saudi Arabia. When Egypt and Syria launched the Yom Kippur waragainst Israel that October, American officials said, publicly and privately, that the Saudis would never join an oil embargo to support their Egyptian and Syrian allies. But when it became clear that Israel was about to humiliate the Arabs once again and the Nixon administration asked Congress for an emergency appropriation of $2.2 billion to pay for arms shipments to Israel, Faisal yielded to the wishes of the Saudi Ulema, the country's Muslim elders, and wielded his oil weapon to punish the United States.
The oil embargo, accompanied by production cuts, was short-lived, but it changed the world. Faisal was pleased to find a way, in March 1974, to lift it, but by then the price of oil had risen from less than $3 a barrel to more than $11. It was a change destined to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from oil-consuming nations to oil producers, making Saudi Arabia enormously rich. On the foundation of that wealth and the oil that produced it, the modern Saudi-American relationship was constructed.
[...]