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On the day Turkey was hosting Russian and Iranian leaders to discuss the war in Syria, where all three countries have been engaged in proxy wars, another proxy war started to escalate seriously.<\/p>\n
A long-range drone or missile attack that struck Saudi Arabia\u2019s critical oil installations a couple of days before, put the Middle East, once again, on edge.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s strikes against the Anqaid oil processing facility and the Khurais oil field in Saudi Arabia, two key assets of the country\u2019s oil infrastructure, caused mayhem on the oil markets on Monday. Oil prices soared; global stock markets declined; currencies tied to oil-exporting countries strengthened; importing countries suffered. The Turkish lira was down almost 1 per cent against the dollar.<\/p>\n
More importantly, it has heightened tensions between Iran and the United States, destabilising an already volatile region.<\/p>\n
Yemen\u2019s Iran-aligned, Shia Houthi forces claimed responsibility for the attacks. As Iran is providing weapons and funding for the Houthi rebels in their fight against Saudi Arabia in Yemen, it was no surprise that the spotlight fell immediately on Iran.<\/p>\n
Despite Iranian denials of any involvement, and the Saudis not explicitly blaming any party for the attacks while indicating that Iranian weapons were used, the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put the blame squarely on Iran.<\/p>\n
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on those involved to prevent escalation. Russia cautioned against jumping to conclusions and condemned talk of retaliation. \u00a0China said that it was irresponsible to blame anyone for an attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities without conclusive facts. The EU urged \u201cmaximum restraint and de-escalation\u201d.\u00a0 Ambassador Karen Pierce, UK Permanent Representative at the UN, reminded us that they were still assessing what happened and who was responsible for the attacks. \u201cOnce this has been established, we will discuss with our partners how to proceed in a responsible manner. We hope for united, international response to these awful attacks\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n
Appeals for maximum restraint have fallen on deaf ears as far as Iran and the United States were concerned.<\/p>\n
With President Trump saying they were \u201clocked and loaded\u201d for a retaliation, and Iran declaring they have always been ready for a \u2018full-fledged\u2019 war, the Middle East is once again in danger of being the world\u2019s battleground.<\/p>\n
With an inconsistent, unpredictable president in Washington DC, a reckless and unaccountable Crown Prince in Riyadh, an aggressive regime on an ideological crusade in Tehran, and the US and Iran whipping up a nasty war of words, there is every reason to be worried.<\/p>\n
This serious escalation has become dangerous for Turkey, too.<\/p>\n
Apart from the possibility of a damaging regional conflict on its doorstep, jumping oil prices would hit Turkey as it is heavily reliant on oil and gas imports.<\/p>\n
Turkey has close but complicated links to both the United States and Iran.<\/p>\n
With Saudi Arabia, there is an ongoing enmity over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and regional rivalry over the leadership role in the Islamic world.<\/p>\n
With its NATO partner, the US, Turkey\u2019s relations have been a difficult geopolitical juggle in recent years.<\/p>\n
As for Iran, Ankara and Tehran have been at opposite camps in their proxy wars in Syria. Yet Iran relies on Turkey for its trade links with the outside world and Turkey would suffer without the Iranian gas.<\/p>\n
Historical regional rivals they may have been, but they have some similarities too. \u00a0Their governments and public tend to exaggerate their regional importance and both countries are prone to miscalculations in their foreign policies.<\/p>\n
As in many other regional crises and Middle Eastern proxy wars, the winner seems to be the Russian President Vladimir Putin, once again.<\/p>\n
Speaking in Ankara, at the end of his tripartite meeting on Syrian war with the Presidents Rouhani and Erdogan, Putin was barely able to hide his amusement over the failure of Saudi Arabia\u2019s vastly expensive state-of-the-art radar and air defence systems. Putin offered to sell Russian missile systems to Saudi Arabia, \u201cin the same way that Iran has already done in buying the S-300 Russian missile system and the same way that Turkey has already done in buying the S-400 Russian missile system,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On the day Turkey was hosting Russian and Iranian leaders to discuss the war in Syria, where all three countries have been engaged in proxy wars, another proxy war started to escalate seriously. A long-range drone or missile attack that struck Saudi Arabia\u2019s critical oil installations a couple of days before, put the Middle East, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[40,41,39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29552"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29552"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29556,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29552\/revisions\/29556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}