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Officials said it’s one option on the table as the administration weighs how to respond to OPEC’s cut to oil production without undermining U.S. objectives in the Middle East.

WASHINGTON — Biden administration officials are considering trying to discourage American companies from expanding business ties with Saudi Arabia as part of a U.S. response to a recent Saudi-led push by oil-producing countries to cut global production, said three current and former U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.

The administration also will not send any U.S. official to Saudi Arabia’s annual Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh next week, officials said, although a senior administration official said the determination was made before the OPEC+ alliance announced Oct. 5 that it would cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day. The official said the administration was unable to make scheduling work to send a U.S. government official to the high-profile conference, sometimes referred to as “Davos in the desert,” which has been a prized event for Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Exploring ways to use American businesses as leverage against Saudi Arabia comes as President Joe Biden says he’s re-evaluating his administration’s relationship with the kingdom and considering how to retaliate against Riyadh over the oil production decision. The current and former U.S. officials said no decisions have been made about whether to proceed with such an effort. They said it’s just one of the options under consideration as Biden considers how to balance responding with not undermining some core U.S. objectives in the Middle East, namely uniting Israel and its Arab neighbors against Iran.

The thinking behind a move to pull back American business investment in Saudi Arabia is that it could influence the kingdom without directly affecting U.S. security in the region, but it also would come with a risk that U.S. businesses won’t listen.

As of now, American companies are set to appear in full force at next week’s Future Investment Initiative conference, which has drawn business executives, investors and government officials. The event has been a platform for the crown prince, also known as MBS, to showcase business opportunities in the kingdom.

Officials acknowledged that it’s too late to affect the turnout of American business executives at this year’s conference, which begins Oct. 25 in Riyadh, even if the administration wanted to do so. The theme of this year’s conference is “Investing in Humanity: Enabling a New Global Order.”

The Biden administration had already downgraded U.S. participation in the conference from the Trump administration’s level of engagement. The Trump administration sent the treasury secretary to the conference, whereas last year the Biden administration sent Deputy Commerce Secretary Don Graves. The Commerce Department confirmed he will not attend this year.

Adrienne Watson, the spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, said the administration has not reached out to American companies to discourage them from doing business in Saudi Arabia.

“We are not reaching out to companies to make such requests,” Watson said in a statement. “As they do in every part of the world, American companies will make their own decisions about their presence and where to invest, taking into account a range of factors, including legal constraints, the business environment and reputational concerns that can arise from public policy choices made by host countries.”

In addition to considering trying to squeeze the Saudis in the business world, a senior administration official said the Biden administration plans to immediately dial back diplomatic and military engagements with Riyadh, describing a cooling of relations that would likely last until OPEC+ leadership holds its next official meeting on Dec. 4, the 34th OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting.

The outcome of the December meeting will be pivotal to the future of the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, the official said. The meeting convenes the day before a European Union sanctions package against Russia takes effect. The package will include a partial embargo on Russian oil and a ban on importing Russian crude oil from the sea. The sanctions will limit E.U. countries from reselling Russian crude oil and petroleum products.

“That’s going to be a key test, that OPEC meeting,” the senior administration official said. “E.U. sanctions will be going into effect, and a couple million barrels [of Russian oil] will be gone. Does OPEC do nothing then?”

‘Under pressure’

Biden is under pressure from Congress to take dramatic steps, such as cutting off arms sales to the kingdom, and White House officials are furious with Riyadh that after heavy U.S. lobbying not to cut oil production, OPEC+ moved forward with an even larger cut than expected. U.S. officials have said the decision will drive up gas prices and provide an economic lifeline to Russia — a major oil exporter — as it continues its brutal war in Ukraine. Officials also have accused the crown prince of arm-twisting other members of the OPEC+ alliance into the decision.

Saudi Arabia has said the decision does neither of those things, and it has stressed that it was made collectively by a group of countries.

U.S. officials, including the president, have promised a response to Riyadh, but so far none has been implemented, and officials have said decisions would be made in consultation with Congress, which doesn’t return to Washington until after November’s midterm elections.

“The Biden administration seems to be scrambling a bit to find practical measures that could back up the rhetoric from President Biden that there will be consequences,” said Brian Katulis, the vice president of policy at the Middle East Institute.

“One arena where Saudi leaders are very interested in building stronger ties with the United States is in the economic realm and in particular private-sector engagement,” Katulis said. “Saudi leaders are keen to have American businesses and investors come to their country and make big investments to help them advance the goal of diversifying its economy.”

Foreign investment in Saudi Arabia is a core part of the crown prince’s plan to diversify the kingdom’s economy.

Early last year Riyadh announced that starting in 2024 only international companies with regional headquarters in Saudi Arabia could do business with the Saudi government.

The crown prince’s efforts were set back after journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in October 2018. Under bipartisan pressure, Trump administration Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin canceled plans to attend the Future Investment Initiative conference held later that month. U.S. intelligence agencies ultimately concluded that MBS approved Khashoggi’s killing. The Saudi government has denied that the crown prince had any role in the murder.

Engagement with Saudi Arabia has picked back up, culminating with Biden’s visit to the kingdom, where he was photographed fist-bumping with MBS in July.

Before the OPEC+ decision this month, U.S. and Saudi officials spent hours discussing the future of oil prices, according to administration officials.

The Saudis told the Americans they were prepared to sustain the increased production until the end of the year, the senior administration official said, and that was the expectation of both the U.S. and other OPEC countries for months.

But then more recently, the Saudis presented the U.S. with an analysis that the price of oil was likely to fall and argued they needed to cut production to avoid a price crater, U.S. officials said. The U.S. disagreed and presented evidence that the prices were likely to remain stable for another 30 days and that the production cut could wait until the next OPEC meeting, and it even argued OPEC could change production at any time if the price started to tank, they said. But, they said, the Saudis wouldn’t budge from their analysis and charts arguing that a price collapse was imminent.

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Some excitable commentators predicted that the Russo-Ukrainian war would be the first primarily fought by guided missiles and unmanned aircraft – but this has not proven true. Instead, drones and missiles have staked out their limited territory in Ukraine – serving as spotters for artillery, aerial grenadiers, and have – in the case of fan-favorite Turkish-made TB-2 Bayraktar drones on the Ukrainian side – brought about the destruction of Russian vehicles and positions in the ordinary UAV way.

Meanwhile, manned aircraft are guarded closely, fighters used sparingly, and helicopters used to conduct resupply missions only at extreme risk. Anti-air weaponry is good enough – and on so many soldiers’ backs – that this hesitance to risk manned aircraft is likely to continue.

That much is true in warfare fought between two states on land. At sea, things are different. Two U.S. Navy ‘maritime drones’ were seized by the Iranian navy last Thursday, although the Americans were able persuade Tehran to hand them over after turning up in force. This is a taste of what’s to come.]

Across the region, America is planning for a future filled with drones and missiles. Surveying the landscape, this is a reasonable prediction. Six years ago, the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorized the coalition fighters attempting to take its capitals of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria by using rudimentary drones to drop grenades on unsuspecting attacking forces. Ever since, drones developed for military use have become more widely available and more sophisticated, and the commercial kind, ripe for repurposing, have become cheaper, too.

A drone is launched from an Iranian military ship during a military exercise in an undisclosed location in IranCredit: WANA NEWS AGENCY/ REUTERS

The primary threat to Middle East regional peace, and the Gulf status quo, is Iran and its network of proxies. Historically, Iran has threatened shipping in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman with naval vessels and small coast-guard-type ships. It has attacked tankers and merchant ships repeatedly in this way, notably during the Tanker War of the 1980s and recent attacks on shipping carrying the flags of many countries.

Efforts to rein in this campaign have proven only partially successful. A fleet of nautical drones, developed and deployed by the United States and its allies – entirely possible with today’s technology – could play a more effective spoiler.

America fears a near-term future in which Iran not only further militarizes the Gulf, but where all of its proxies from Lebanon and Yemen to Iraq are armed with fighting drones – air and sea – and ballistic missiles.

Launch of a military unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) during a two-day drone drill at an undisclosed location in IranCredit: – – AFP

Yemen’s Houthis have so successfully attacked the Saudi oil economy with Iranian ballistic missiles that Israel apparently considers the Houthi missile program a threat to itself. Enough allegedly to attack the Houthi missile program, anyway.

Israel is an inevitable target of drone air wings and fleets. Hezbollah in Lebanon has used armed drones to antagonize Israel by breaching its borders and attempting to damage its economy, leading to a number of shooting down incidents.

In early July, Israeli forces shot down a swam of Hezbollah drones it said were heading for an Israeli offshore gas rig, close to waters claimed by Lebanon as its maritime territory. Two weeks later, Israel intercepted another drone, likely of Hezbollah origin, which originated from the Lebanese side of the border.

Hezbollah’s drone strategy is brutally simple. It arms drones and sends them running headlong kamikaze-style into key targets. If they are able to attack, the benefit handily exceeds the cost of the weaponry. If they are shot down – preferably by an expensive Israeli missile – the few hundred dollars the drone and its armament cost are pennies compared to the millions spent on, for example, Israel’s Patriot systems (which Israel has repeatedly used to shoot drones down). This is asymmetrical and cost-effective warfare.

Open gallery view

Screenshot from a Hezbollah video reportedly showing drone footage from overflying an Israeli offshore gas facility in the Mediterranean Karish fieldCredit: – – AFP

In their own way, other nations like Saudi Arabia have tried to build anti-drone technology and tactics to fight the drone battalions they fear appearing on the horizon. American intelligence believes the Iranians have already used drones to attack an Israeli tanker last year – and that attack resulted in two deaths among the crew.

The United States believes a unified strategy is needed. Part of this is coordination of intelligence. With a variety of Middle East allies like Saudi Arabia, Israel and Bahrain participating, more eyes can scan the Persian Gulf than ever before. Michael Brasseur, who heads the U.S. Navy task force in Bahrain on maritime drones told the Wall Street Journal that the navy anticipates over 100 floating surveillance drones to be deployed to spy the waters from the Suez Canal all the way to Bahrain.

One note of caution. All American attempts to build Arab-on-Arab, and Arab-on-Israeli, cooperation on defense are fraught. Donald Trump’s idea of an “Arab NATO” was a failure which was universally disdained by its supposed paying members the moment it was suggested.

Open gallery view

Iranian Revolutionary Guard ship Shahid Bazair towing a U.S. Navy Saildrone Explorer in the Persian Gulf last monthCredit: U.S. Navy /AP

Any unified command – especially of a drone navy – would prove equally troublesome.

American officials might share Jared Kushner’s belief in the transformative power of the ‘Abraham Accords’ to unite Arab and Israeli interests against Iran. But with the United Arab Emirates attempting diplomatic rapprochement with both Iran and its client, the Assad regime in Syria, full agreement seems unlikely.

But the drone future is coming. It is in many ways already here. A new tanker war, this time fought by unmanned ships and aircraft, seems entirely possible. And with Iran’s proxy militias largely in the ascendant, no one can yet tell if this U.S.-led surveillance-plus initiative will be enough to rein the rain of drones and missiles in – and how vulnerable even innovative countermeasures might leave both commerce and civilians in the Middle East and beyond.

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The announcement on Sunday is in line with UAE’s efforts to strengthen relations with Iran “to achieve the common interests of the two countries and the wider region”, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The UAE scaled back its ties with Tehran in 2016 after Iranian protesters stormed Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic missions in Iran following Riyadh’s execution of prominent Shia scholar Nimr al-Nimr.

Last week, the Emirati and Iranian foreign ministers had a telephone conversation and they discussed boosting ties, UAE state media reported, where they discussed sending an ambassador back to Tehran.

Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amirabdollahian discussed ways of “boosting bilateral relations and areas of cooperation for the benefit of both countries”, UAE’s state news agency WAM reported then.

After years of animosity on different sides of geopolitical rivalries, the UAE started re-engaging with Iran in 2019 following attacks in Gulf waters and on Saudi energy sites.

Last year, Saudi Arabia also moved to improve ties with Iran at a time when Gulf Arab states are closely eyeing efforts to revive Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with world powers, which they deem flawed for not addressing its missile programme.

Though Riyadh and Abu Dhabi want an end to Tehran’s moves in the region, they also want to contain the tensions as they focus on economic priorities.

The UAE has business and trade ties with Iran stretching back more than a century, with the emirate of Dubai long being one of Iran’s main links to the outside world.

Fellow Gulf state Kuwait earlier this month appointed its first ambassador to Iran since 2016.

The warming of diplomatic ties comes after the UAE normalised ties with Israel in September 2020. Three other Arab countries – Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco – also forged diplomatic relations with Israel under the so-called Abraham Accords brokered by the United States.

Even as the UAE normalised relations with Tehran’s regional foe, Emirati officials have escalated efforts to boost trade relations with Iran and reduce the threat from its regional proxies.

Earlier this year, drone and missile strikes by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen hit Abu Dhabi, hurting the UAE’s reputation as a safe haven in a volatile region.

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“In cooperation with Russia, the Khayyam satellite will be launched next week from the Baikonur space station in Kazakhstan by a Soyuz satellite carrier,” the Iranian space agency said late Wednesday.

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The satellite, apparently named after 11th-12th century Persian polymath Omar Khayyam, aims to “monitor the country’s borders”, enhance agricultural productivity and monitor water resources and natural disasters, the agency added.

Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos confirmed the launch is scheduled for Tuesday.

“On August 9, 2022, a Soyuz 2.1B rocket is scheduled to be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome… to put the Khayyam remote sensing device ordered by the Islamic Republic of Iran into orbit,” it said in a statement.

“The Khayyam device was designed and manufactured at enterprises that are part of the state corporation Roscosmos,” it added.

News of the launch follows Putin’s visit to Iran on July 19, when he met President Ebrahim Raisi and Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei called for strengthening “long-term cooperation” with Russia in his talks with Putin.

Iran’s state news agency IRNA said the satellite has high imaging accuracy and is capable of filming the earth’s surface in different image spectra.

Russia is putting the satellite into space but it will be guided and controlled from ground stations in Iran, IRNA added.

Khayyam will not be the first Iranian satellite to be put into space by Russia.

In October 2005, Iran’s Sina-1 satellite, which aimed to study and observe the Earth, was deployed from Russia’s Plesetsk cosmodrome.

In June 2021, Putin denied a US media report that Russia is set to deliver an advanced satellite system to Iran that will vastly improve its spying capabilities.

Iran insists its space programme is for civilian and defence purposes only, and does not breach the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, or any other international agreement.

Western governments worry that satellite launch systems incorporate technologies interchangeable with those used in ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, something Iran has always denied wanting to build.

Iran successfully put its first military satellite into orbit in April 2020, drawing a sharp rebuke from the United States.

In March, the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological arm of Iran’s armed forces, announced it had successfully put a military “reconnaissance satellite”, Nour-2, into orbit.

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The bloc’s coordinator for the talks, Enrique Mora, in addition to top negotiators from Tehran and Washington, were reportedly heading back to the Austrian capital on Wednesday for indirect talks that are expected to begin on Thursday.

The original format – also including China, Russia, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, shaping a Joint Commission – that began talks to restore the nuclear accord in April 2021, will be reconvened.

Russia’s chief negotiator Mikhail Ulyanov wrote on Twitter that talks would “resume shortly” and that Russian negotiators “stand ready for constructive talks in order to finalise the agreement”.

Mora said in a tweet that a text proposed by the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell two weeks ago will be the basis of discussions, with the bloc’s representative once more performing shuttle diplomacy between Iran and the US.

Iran’s delegation will be led by Ali Bagheri Kani, who is expected to put forward Tehran’s ideas on the lifting of US sanctions and safeguard probes on Iran’s nuclear programme, which will be relayed to the US chief negotiator Robert Malley.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said in a statement on Wednesday that Tehran is serious about achieving a sustainable agreement.

He also expressed hope that “the other parties will also create the conditions for effectively progressing the talks through adopting necessary decisions and seriously focusing on resolving remaining issues”.

‘Transparent and compliant’

Iran and the US had held two days of talks mediated by Mora in Qatar in June, but which concluded without progress. Negotiations have stalled since March, with each side accusing the other of not being serious enough.

Wednesday’s developments come after another week of tensions and uncertainty concerning the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the nuclear deal is formally known.

Hours after the US imposed a new batch of sanctions targeting Iran’s petrochemical exports on Monday, Tehran responded by issuing an order to feed gas into “hundreds” of advanced centrifuges, further accelerating its nuclear programme.

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