AHC: War between Saudi Arabia and Iran

Other than oil prices dropped during the 1980s even with the Iran-Iraq war. Once Iran stepped up their activities to interdict oil tankers in the late 1980s, the US took action in Operations Nimble Archer and Praying Mantis. If the Iranians do it now, they would have to contend with not only US forces but the forces of the PRC who would not take kindly to losing 40+% of their oil imports.

Oil prices dropped for many other reasons although they bounced up and around during the tanker war. Part of the reason is the US intervened to keep the straights open. And other than a few notable incidents, they did.

My reference to the "missiles flying" was a generic idiom for war, like saying the bombs dropping. You can run with it however you wish - the point of debate is how much does a conflict disrupt the flow of crude through the gulf. If you slow the throughput by even 25%, you just cause the price of oil to skyrocket. It's better in the 80s when it would have been easier to bring back American production that was gradually taken off line as the price was declining. But by the mid 90s it would take a while to bring it back. It wasnt until 2011/12 when fracking really came on line that the US could fill in a missing production to any degree. Of course, there are other issues to consider by then as well.
 
An interesting TL to consider by someone would be a semi-successful Shiite revolt in 1991. Iraq devolves into a low grade civil war for a couple of years, long enough for the US to the majority of its forces out of the gulf, and then turns into modern day Syria. This also give Iran time to recover from their first war with Iraq. Perhaps around 1994, the tide turns for the Shiites and now Saudi Arabia intervenes. Bonus, if its in the late spring of 94, the US is also involved in a tense showdown with North Korea that nearly led to war at the time (jesus things never change...).

There's a lot to play with there.
 

kernals12

Banned
Easy: America and Europe makes it very clear that any attacks on those states or attempts to block their commerce will result in retaliation. Back it up with warships.
Well, I guess we just came up with a scenario of a 3rd World War with no Soviet Union and no nuclear exchanges.
 

kernals12

Banned
Other than oil prices dropped during the 1980s even with the Iran-Iraq war. Once Iran stepped up their activities to interdict oil tankers in the late 1980s, the US took action in Operations Nimble Archer and Praying Mantis. If the Iranians do it now, they would have to contend with not only US forces but the forces of the PRC who would not take kindly to losing 40+% of their oil imports.
Oil prices doubled when Iraq invaded Kuwait.
 

kernals12

Banned
Oil prices dropped for many other reasons although they bounced up and around during the tanker war. Part of the reason is the US intervened to keep the straights open. And other than a few notable incidents, they did.

My reference to the "missiles flying" was a generic idiom for war, like saying the bombs dropping. You can run with it however you wish - the point of debate is how much does a conflict disrupt the flow of crude through the gulf. If you slow the throughput by even 25%, you just cause the price of oil to skyrocket. It's better in the 80s when it would have been easier to bring back American production that was gradually taken off line as the price was declining. But by the mid 90s it would take a while to bring it back. It wasnt until 2011/12 when fracking really came on line that the US could fill in a missing production to any degree. Of course, there are other issues to consider by then as well.
Fracking technology has been around for a long time, and while modern technology made it easier to do it profitably in the 2010s, it could've been done in the 80s if prices went high enough. This fundamentally is the reason why you can ignore dire predictions about resource depletion. There is a virtually unlimited supply of almost every resource we need if the price is right.
 
I don't think either country has the wealth or the infrastructure to be able to manage any kind of war.

The Iranians fought Iraq for eight years. Most of those years, they were trying to invade Iraq, a country one third their size sitting in a flood plain. They lacked the infrastructure and logistical capacity for anything more than relatively static trench warfare a few dozen miles from their borders.

We've seen Saudi Arabia's military in action lately, intervening in Yemen, and it's been astonishingly underwhelming.

Both of these countries have failed utterly at any kind of massive power projection. The reality is that war is an incredibly expensive undertaking, and it goes through money and supplies at an astonishing rate. Having an army is one thing. Having an army that can fight on large scale operations is another. Having an army which can operate out of country and be maintained and supplied constantly is incredibly difficult.

I think that it always has been, but as mechanisation has taken over - as you need gas for vehicles, spare parts for vehicles, trucks, all kinds of, kitchens, food supplies, massive quantities of ammo, latrines, medics, and in larger and larger numbers, it's been exorbitantly expensive, and not just expensive, difficult in unique ways. The countries that have done it, the countries that do it, have extremely sophisticated infrastructure, and literally centuries of accumulated experience and investment. You can't create that overnight.
 
Fracking technology has been around for a long time, and while modern technology made it easier to do it profitably in the 2010s, it could've been done in the 80s if prices went high enough. This fundamentally is the reason why you can ignore dire predictions about resource depletion. There is a virtually unlimited supply of almost every resource we need if the price is right.

All true with the caveat that modern fracking is based in horizontal drilling which I believe was developed in the 90s or early 00's. And advances in technology have lowered the E&P costs for alternative wells making them more economically feasible now than what would have been the case in 1970 or 1990.
 
Top