Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball report on “Breaking Points” that President Trump’s reversal on “Operation Freedom” came so suddenly because Saudi Arabia and Kuwait refused to participate or allow the U.S. to use their bases or airspace. And this, alongside “reports that U.S. bases in the region have taken a lot more damage than officially stated, makes Iran’s goal of expelling the U.S. from the entire Middle East seem kind of realistic. “Obviously, this is proof beyond any measure that the Iranian policy of horizontal escalation and of punishing Gulf allies has been tremendously successful,” Saagar said. “What the Saudis and the Kuwaitis saw was, with the announcement of Project Freedom, the immediate targeting of the Fujairah oil plant in the UAE, the only one from which they’re able to export oil outside of the Strait of Hormuz.” NBC News: Trump’s Abrupt U-Turn on Plan to Reopen Strait of Hormuz Came After Backlash From Allies “Saudi Arabia sits in terror of further attacks on their east-west pipeline and the Yanbu oil facility, on the Red Sea,” he said. “In addition to the Houthis, who haven’t yet joined the war.” “And Kuwait, apparently, has not exported a single barrel of oil in 30 days,” he continued. “I mean, they have plenty of money, but nobody has that much money to sustain your economy in a total 30-day shutdown of the vast amount of your imports and exports.” “So these two things combined show much less confidence, and instead a curtailing and a real humiliation of the American empire,” he said. What we’ve also seen is not only now a rejection by these traditional U.S. allies – the Gulf and Kuwait – but we’ve been unable to protect them sufficiently that they feel OK with letting us do that.” Washington Post: Iran Has Hit Far More U.S. Military Assets Than Reported, Satellite Images Show “This makes us really dependent on mid-air refueling,” he warned. “This undercuts some of this notion from reports we’ve seen that Saudi Arabia has been a real cheerleader for the war,” Krystal Ball added. “This is a stunning rebuke,” she said. “Iran has said since the beginning of this war that one of their goals is U.S. withdrawal from the region, and especially from Saudi Arabia, because the presence of the U.S. Army in the holy land for them is a particular issue of concern.” “That seemed so fanciful at the beginning of this war,” she said. “And now, between Saudi and Kuwait saying they don’t want us operating from out soil — combined with the fact that our bases have been basically obliterated in the region, it no longer seems like such an incredibly preposterous or far-fetched outcome.” “The Washington Post reported how many more U.S. military assets were hit than reported, according to satellite images,” she said. “We could tell anecdotally, because the soldiers had to be removed from the bases and housed in civilian hotels, which probably saved a lot of lives, actually.” “This introduces another factor and another consideration for Trump, in terms of the options that he’s evaluating here for Iran, because we hadn’t really considered that the Gulf allies may pull the plug,” Krystal Ball said. “We really can’t continue to prosecute a war or even the economic blockade fully without their support.”
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