When war broke out Yamani was in Geneva.
“In the beginning we didn’t know who took the initiative. We were concerned. When we discovered that the Egyptians and the Syrians started this, we were enthusiastic. We all wanted to know the outcome.”
That’s when Yamani put two and two together and decided that Faisal knew all along about the Egyptian plans for the war.
Sadat visited Saudi Arabia in August 1973 and had a very long and private audience with the king. After such meetings in the past, it was not uncommon for Faisal casually to mention to Yamani what topics were discussed. Often he’d ask Yamani’s advice. At other times it was just a question of having someone to talk to. This time Faisal appeared to be a man with a serious concern. And this time Faisal said nothing.
According to Saudi protocol, Sadat was accompanied during his stay in the country by Hisham Nazer, who was then the Minister of Planning. When Sadat left the king’s office to return to his guest palace, he turned to Nazer and confided, “After a meeting with King Faisal, you feel as if someone has taken part of the burden off your shoulders.”
A couple of weeks later, Yamani went to tell the king that he was leaving the next day for a conference in San Francisco.
Faisal kept silent. He stared at Yamani as if he were debating whether or not to tell him something.
Yamani reminded him, “I have to leave tomorrow.”
The king asked, “When do you come back?”
Yamani said, “Immediately after the end of the conference.”
Again Faisal kept silent.
Realizing that something must be bothering the king, Yamani asked, “Shall I go or not?”
Faisal thought about it for the longest time before he said, “All right go. But come back quickly.”
In all their years of friendship, Faisal had never acted like that before.
The day after Yamani left for the States, the king called for his son, Saud. He wanted to know, “When is Zaki coming back?”
Saud said, “I don’t know. Do you want me to cable him or call him and ask when he’s coming back?”
Faisal thought again for a long time, then said, “No, don’t do that.”
In all their years of friendship, Faisal had never done that either.
As soon as Yamani returned, Saud told him about his father’s concern. Yamani immediately went to see the king and asked, “Did you want me for anything?”
But Faisal said, “No. Not now. Maybe later.”
Within a few days of his return from San Francisco, Yamani was scheduled to go to Vienna to chair the OPEC ministerial committee meeting where the renegotiation of the Tehran/Tripoli Agreements was to be discussed. As was his custom, he went to see the king to say that he was going to the meeting.
Now Faisal answered, “Send somebody else.”
Yamani tried to explain that he couldn’t send someone else because only a minister can preside over this committee. He reminded the king, “If I don’t appear it might seem as if Saudi Arabia wasn’t anxious to see the agreements revised and that would be very serious for the negotiations.
Faisal understood and nodded, “All right, go.”
But it was very clear to Yamani that he didn’t want him to go. “He wanted me to stay at home. He knew something was about to happen.”
As it turns out, Faisal did know about the plans for war. Sadat made the trip in August specifically to tell Faisal where and how, although he did not say when.
Dr. Ashraf Marwan, President Nasser’s son-in-law and now a London-based businessman, was head of Egyptian Intelligence and the only other person in that meeting with Sadat and Faisal. “It was important that King Faisal be kept informed because he was the most respected, most important ruler in the Gulf. My own father-in-law fought a war with King Faisal in the Yemen and the two men were enemies. But President Nasser never ceased to respect King Faisal. So it was only natural that President Sadat confer with Faisal to tell him what was planned. But we did not tell the Saudi Arabians when the war would start. It wasn’t that we feared the Saudis would inform the Americans and that word would get back to the Israelis. No. There just wasn’t any reason to reveal anything more than that the war was planned. President Sadat told King Faisal it would happen soon, very soon, but he did not say when.”
As Arab jubilation dissolved into a second humiliation, Yamani came to realize the time was fast approaching when Saudi Arabia would have to act.
“The Arabs, especially the Palestinians, have always talked about using oil as a political weapon, as a means of punishing the West. I knew that the Arab oil producers would meet to discuss what they wanted to do. You know, how they wanted to use oil as a weapon or political instrument or whatever it was to be. I knew I had to be prepared. I had to engineer something.”
In Vienna he met separately and secretly with two of his colleagues. One of them is still in the Ministry of Petroleum. The other is an Egyptian working for the Kuwaitis. He gave them both his view that, if the Arabs were going to use oil as an instrument to drive their points home to the West, the best way was jointly to reduce their level of production right away. Then every month, they could reduce it again by 5 percent. His idea was to create a climate for world public opinion to give the world time to think about this dispute between the Arabs and the Israelis.
“I spoke with the two of them in confidence and I am positive that neither of them ever revealed anything. You can imagine how amazed I was then to read in the International Herald Tribune, two days before we met in Kuwait, exactly what I had said in my Vienna hotel room. It meant that my room was bugged.”
He’s asked, by whom?
He answers, “I don’t know.”
He’s asked, whom do you suspect?
And he shrugs, “Does it matter?”
If he sounds a bit blasé about such things, it’s probably because over the years there’s been a lot of surveillance activity aimed at him. In fact, since the late 1970s his personal security staff includes a debugging expert.
Without saying that electronic eavesdropping is more likely to happen in the West than it is in the Middle East, he insists it takes place in the West more consistently than most people realize. And he can’t deny that he has always expected to be bugged while in the United States.
Hotels are where most of it happens because it’s so easy to arrange.
His security staff have found microphones and transmitters hidden in everything from dressers to huge bouquets of flowers sent to Yamani with the manager’s compliments. The most annoying occurrence was the night someone in a nearby building beamed a laser listening device on him. Something wasn’t working correctly and the windows in Yamani’s suite rattled and buzzed all night, keeping him awake.
In one hotel, which he refuses to name, he notes the bugs are actually built into the wall. And because hotel switchboards are easily tapped, he uses a portable scrambler whenever he wants to discuss sensitive information over the phone.
He’s convinced the best weapon he’s got against any type of surveillance is the knowledge that it’s happening. “I have to be philosophical about it. When you’re in public life these things happen. You have to accept that and learn to live with it.”
Being bugged doesn’t necessarily matter to him now and didn’t particularly matter to him then, but where the oil weapon was concerned, the behavior of the more radical Arabs has always mattered a great deal.
“I knew that the radicals, Iraq, Libya, Algeria and Syria, were about to call for something very destructive. So I went to Faisal with my proposal. Immediate joint reductions of 10 percent and then 5 percent per month. I told him it would lead to a specific reaction in the West but that it wouldn’t harm the West. I told him it would only be enough to create a new climate. And he immediately accepted it. I remember it didn’t take him one minute to say yes.”
As ruler of a nation that considers itself leader of the Moslem world, Faisal never left any doubt about his anti- Zionist feelings or his obligation to Islam. As protector of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, he was also protector of the third most holy spot in Islam - Al Aqsa, the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem.
But, now, that was in the hands of the Israelis.
Because of the war, Arabs were united in spirit. However, they also found themselves joined together by oil in a sellers’ market. Using oil as a weapon seemed a more viable proposition than at any other time in the past.
Of course, Faisal and Yamani both knew that if, for whatever reason, the oil weapon didn’t work or wouldn’t work, face would be lost. So the game was not without its risks.
Faisal also feared that American indifference to the Arab cause might be enough of a catalyst to drive certain Arab extremist leaders into the hands of the Russians. And the one thing he dreaded more than an American stand for Israel’s rights was a communist foothold in the Middle East.
All of those factors came into play, in varying degrees, during a meeting with the Aramco chairman on May 3, 1973. Frank Jungers was paying a courtesy call on the king when Faisal lectured him about American policy in the Middle East.
According to Jungers’ classified notes, “He (Faisal) went to great lengths to explain his predicament in Middle East as a staunch friend of USA and how it was absolutely mandatory USG (the United States Government) do something to change the direction that events were taking us in the Middle East today... He emphasized he was not able to stand alone much longer. He barely touched on the usual conspiracy idea but emphasized that Zionism and along with it the Communists were on verge of having American interests thrown out of the area... (and that) a simple disavowal of Israeli policies and actions by the USG would go a long way toward overcoming the current anti-American feeling.”
Jungers concluded, “The tone of this, meeting, as contrasted with other discussions with him on this subject, was not of belaboring the Israeli/Zionist/Communist problem but rather a well-reasoned and clearly stated one of extreme urgency that something be done to change the course of events. He kept emphasizing that it was up to us as American business and as American friends to make our thoughts and actions felt quickly.”
It’s obvious now that Faisal was making the same mistake that all the Arabs frequently made before October 1973. As any number of historians have since pointed out, up to then the Saudis were convinced that America could solve the Israeli problem with just one sentence. All it would take, the Saudis decided, was for the United States to say, “No more money for Israel.”
They honestly believed this “one-sentence-solution” was a viable possibility.
That, in turn, made America’s refusal to utter the one sentence look as if America was not only siding with the Israelis against the Arabs, but at the same time saying to the Arabs, we will not help you.
October 1973 was when that began to change.
By the time the oil crisis had run its course, the Saudis at least had come to understand that the question of Israel, of Arab lands and of Palestine was not merely an international issue for America, it was a domestic one as well.
“Faisal was understandably disturbed about the American attitude,” Yamani explains. “He kept saying this to me several times after he sent me on that mission to Washington. About one month later, I remember, I was meeting in Geneva with the Middle East directors of the American oil companies that made up Aramco. Faisal was on his way back to Saudi Arabia from Paris and stopped in Geneva. So I arranged a meeting for the Americans. He told them precisely, inform your government that if they don’t move, if they don’t become active in trying to find a Middle East settlement, their interests will be harmed.”
In other words, Faisal was now threatening nationalization.
Yamani denies it. “No. I don’t think he was doing that at all. He was simply telling them, don’t take us for granted. He was very friendly. He said, please convey to your government in Washington DC that we are friends and want to be friends forever. But the situation in the Middle East is becoming very critical. Washington has to move so that we can continue our oil policy on a friendly basis. Otherwise, don’t blame us. These were his words.”
Well, sort of.
The meeting took place on May 23, 1973. Among the Americans present were Jungers of Aramco, Al DeCrane of Texaco, C. J. Hedlund from Exxon, H. C. Moses from Mobil and Jones McQuinn from SoCal. Among the Saudis present was Prince Sultan, who frequently travelled with the king.
Confidential notes transcribed after the session reveal that Faisal said, “Time is running out with respect to US interest in Middle East, as well as Saudi position in the Arab world. Saudi Arabia is in danger of being isolated among its Arab friends because of the failure of the US Government to give Saudi Arabia positive support, and that HM is not going to let this happen. “You will lose everything.”
So the oil concessions were clearly at risk.
At least the Americans believed that they were because, as a group, they decided, “Things we must do (1) inform US public of their true interests in the area (they now being misled by controlled news media) and (2) inform Government leaders.”
With their commercial interests on the line, the four Aramco partners did what most people do when the heat is turned up. They started to sweat.
One week later, Messrs. DeCrane, Hedlund, McQuinn, Moses and Johnston made the rounds of the White House, the State Department and the Department of Defense. They were in Washington to sing Faisal’s song.
While their reception was described as “attentiveness to the message and an acknowledgement by all that a problem did exist,” the official Aramco report of those meetings revealed that there was also “a large degree of disbelief that any drastic action was imminent or that any measures other than those already underway were needed to prevent such from happening.”
To begin with, they never got to the heavy guns. They didn’t see Kissinger or the President. At each stop they were farmed out to senior underlings.
The State Department’s man in charge of Middle Eastern Affairs assured them that his information contradicted theirs.
A White House military adviser explained that Saudi Arabia had faced much greater pressures from Nasser than they apparently faced now and had handled them successfully then and should be equally successful now.
The Acting Secretary of Defense - an interim appointee awaiting James Schlesinger’s arrival - assured them that Faisal needed America and their fears were unfounded.
A CIA official told them, “Faisal is bluffing.”
The Aramco conclusion was, “Some believe His Majesty is calling wolf when no wolf exists except in his imagination. Also, there is little or nothing the US Government can do or will do on an urgent basis to affect the Arab/Israel issue.”
In June, the Bunker Hunt Oil Company was nationalized by the Libyans and Anwar Sadat called it “the beginning of the battle against American interests in the Middle East.”
The governor of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi announced, “We will not hesitate to use oil in the fateful battle.”
After that, the Vice-President of the Command Council of the Iraqi revolution announced, “An armed conflict would set oil ablaze.”
Then, the US State Department announced, “The Saudi threats do not worry the United States.”
To drive Faisal’s points home – or, if nothing else, to appease the Saudis - Mobil bought a large ad in the New York Times. The gist of it was that America depended on Saudi Arabian oil but that US-Saudi relations were deteriorating and would continue to do so unless the US really pushed for a settlement in the Middle East. If not, the ad warned, “Political considerations may become the critical element in Saudi Arabia’s decisions.”
Taking a lower-profile approach, Exxon sent Howard Page, the senior executive they considered to be their Middle East expert, to deliver a speech to the Alumni Association of the American University in Beirut.
At the same time, SoCal mailed a letter to all their shareholders, stressing the point, “There now is a growing feeling in much of the Arab world that the United States has turned its back on the Arab people.”
On August 27, an Aramco executive called on Yamani in Dhahran to discuss recent media coverage and King Faisal’s continuing interest in changing US policy. The confidential memorandum of that meeting pointed out, “His Majesty’s answers to questions posed by Newsweek were written by Yamani.”
Furthermore, the memorandum stipulated, “The king feels a personal obligation to do something and knows that oil is now an effective weapon. He is additionally under constant pressure from Arab public opinion and Arab leaders, particularly Sadat. He is losing patience and ‘often nervous.’”
To indicate Faisal’s preoccupation with the problem, the Aramco official wrote that the king had been asking Yamani to give him detailed and periodic reports on Aramco’s production, expansion plans and the expected impact of curtailed production on consumers in the US. “He has asked for example, ‘What would be the effect if Aramco’s current production were reduced by two million barrels a day?’‘This is a completely new phenomenon,’ said Yamani, ‘the king never bothered with such details.’”
The Aramco official also reported that there were elements in Saudi Arabia which, “for their own reasons,” were trying to tell the United States that Saudi Arabia would not follow up on its threats. “Reference here to Fahd’s group.” There were also elements in the US which were misleading Nixon as to the seriousness of Saudi Arabia’s intention. “Yamani mentioned Kissinger. For that reason, the king has been giving interviews and making public statements designed to eliminate any doubt that might exist.”
On September 2, NBC television interviewed Faisal. The king told the American network, “It is a serious worry to us that the United States is not changing its policy in the Middle East and continues to side with Israel. Such a situation affects our relations with our American friends because it puts us in an untenable position within the Arab world.”
When NBC asked if Saudi Arabia was planning to limit oil exports to the US, Faisal answered very plainly, “America’s complete support for Zionism and against the Arab world makes it extremely difficult for us to continue to supply the United States with oil.”
Three days later, in a press conference, President Nixon responded to Faisal, saying it was inappropriate to link US foreign policy towards Israel with Arab oil. “We are not pro-Israel and not pro-Arab. We are not more pro-Arab than pro-Israel just because the Arabs have oil and Israel does not.”
On October 6, the day war broke out, Faisal sent a message to Nixon asking the President to pressure Israel into a withdrawal from the occupied territories. Nixon instead resupplied the Israelis with whatever equipment had been lost in the first three days of fighting.
On October 12, Faisal sent a second message to Nixon, this time warning him that Saudi Arabia could not stand on the sidelines if America continued to contribute to the hostilities against the Arabs.
The next day Nixon ordered an airlift to begin, further resupplying Israel.
On October 15, Faisal tried one last time. He ordered his Foreign Minister to deliver a third message to Nixon, saying that if the Americans made some sort of gesture to limit the damage already done, it was not too late to save the Saudi position in the Middle East.
The Foreign Minister’s appointment was scheduled for the 16th. But reports were being received inside the White House that the Soviets were engaged in a massive operation of shipping arms to the Arabs. Afraid that a Russian stronghold in the area would endanger the balance of power and oil imports to the US, Nixon and Kissinger decided that America’s first priority was to restore equilibrium on the battlefield. Once the Israelis were up to strength again and able to hold off the Arab advances, then the United States would step in to arbitrate an end to the hostilities. Then and only then would the United States try to find a post-war solution to the problem. So, the White House deliberately postponed the meeting with the Saudi Foreign Minister until the 17th.
Faisal took that as a personal insult. Yet, he still he held out hope. He gave his Foreign Minister permission to hold a press conference in Washington. He needed to be certain that the President understood the Saudi position.
However, these were difficult times in the United States. The mood of the American people was turning against the Arabs and their Russian silent-partners. True or not, it was all too easy to group them together. With even the slightest possibility of Soviet intervention, the concept of moderate Arabs and extremist Arabs flew out of the window. The mood of the American people was echoed by one journalist at the press conference who confronted the Foreign Minister by saying, “We do not need your oil. You can drink it.”
The Saudi Foreign Minister answered, “All right. We will.”
Faisal told Yamani, “Go ahead.”
First there was the OPEC meeting to deal with. The ministers gathered on October 16 at the Kuwait Sheraton. The session lasted only a few hours. With the renegotiation of the Tehran Agreements a dead issue, Yamani and Amouzegar voted with the rest of the cartel to raise the price of oil to $5.12.
That same afternoon the non-Arab delegates checked out of the hotel, leaving OPEC to have its turn.
On the morning of October 17, the Iraqis demanded total nationalization of all American assets in the Middle East.
Now there were three separate issues. The price hike was one. A production cutback by OPEC members was another. The embargo was a third.
Concerned that the world would never believe these three issues were separate, Yamani was more determined than ever to see that the radical factions, especially the Iraqis, understood why they couldn’t just nationalize all of the American assets in the Arab world.
“We had to make them understand why the best thing was what we proposed. As you can imagine, it was very violent in that meeting.”
Voices were raised and tempers were lost.
“As usual,” Yamani sighs, although he insists that he never loses his temper. “Unfortunately.”
Why unfortunately?
“Because,” he says, “sometimes if you lose your temper it helps. Not always. But sometimes it can clear the air.”
That morning the radicals held their ground, insisting that the group shut off America’s supply.
Yamani held his ground too.
It was clear to everyone around the table that without Saudi Arabia there could be no effective action. But then it was just as clear to Yamani that without Saudi Arabia the anger of the Arab states would be nothing but a joke in the West. And he wasn’t about to let that happen.
He spent the end of the morning lobbying the Kuwaitis and the other Gulf countries to assure himself that they were on his side. Then he turned his attention to the weakest link in the radical chain, the Algerians.
He spent that afternoon with them, alone, face to face. And before the day was finished he’d managed to convince them that the proposal to keep cutting back on production was a practical one.
That broke the ice.
Once Algeria agreed, the Syrians came along.
At the end of the day only the Iraqis were still holding out.
Pressured by the rest of the group, they withdrew. The Iraq delegation walked out and disassociated themselves from the meeting.
Act Two now began.
A decision was written to reduce oil production immediately by 10 percent and then 5 percent on a monthly basis thereafter, with the added clause that they would not reduce exports to friendly countries.
“We divided the world into friendly countries, neutral countries and hostile countries,” Yamani explains. “But then, although we recommended an embargo, we left the actual decision for that up to each government.”
Yamani returned to Riyadh for the third and final act of the drama.
King Faisal would have to decide whether or not to go ahead with the embargo. And, at least according to Yamani, it was not necessarily a foregone conclusion.
“He was never anxious to impose an embargo against the United States. But Nixon didn’t leave him any choice.”
Jim Akins, on the other hand, feels the embargo was always inevitable. “He (Faisal) was not happy he had to do it but there was never any question about it. It was never debated. In fact, Faisal told me at one time that if he hadn’t imposed the embargo the Saudi people would have strongly objected. Faisal made several statements about this. He said, we are producing more oil than we need. We cannot rationally absorb the income we have from this oil production. We’re only doing this because you’ve asked us to. And we will not continue unless there is some progress in restoring Arab lands. He made that point over and over again. They were sorry to have had to impose the embargo but we were sending arms to Israel during the war. We were flying planes from Germany straight into the occupied Sinai with military equipment. This was considered a hostile act against the Arabs. Then Congress voted for a massive increase of aid to Israel and that was the last straw. It made the embargo inevitable.”
King Faisal announced the embargo by saying, “In view of the increase of American military aid to Israel, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has decided to halt all oil exports to the United States of America.”
Both at the State Department and at the White House, Faisal’s announcement was greeted with some surprise.
It seems that, up to this point, certain assurances were still being given to the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia by an “inside and highly reliable” source close to the king. Word was forthcoming that, while Faisal would of course have to make a verbal stand to satisfy his fellow Arabs, he would never do anything to harm the Saudi relationship with the United States.
Unfortunately for the United States, the information turned out to be unreliable. The source of it, according to an Embassy staff officer who was there at the time, turns out to have been the Minister of Interior, Prince Fahd.
By October 22, all the other OPEC members had joined with Saudi Arabia in an embargo of oil to the United States. Holland was also added to the list because the Dutch steadfastly refused to condemn Israel for the war and volunteers from the Netherlands were being openly recruited to fight for Israel.
Holland said, we will not pay blackmail.
Their stand won praise and respect from the Americans.
But not from Yamani. “Rotterdam is a major market, filled with refineries. It’s obvious that if they couldn’t get any oil they’d be hurt. Business would stop. They knew that when they made their decision to act the way they did. But I don’t necessarily respect them for their decision because I don’t consider what happened to be blackmail.”
He calls it a legitimate political action and says, as a matter of fact, that Saudi Arabia learned how to implement an embargo from the United States. “We watched America and learned how they use one’s economic power to meet political objectives. We studied this carefully.”
Anyway, he goes on, “The Dutch relationship with Israel was different from the rest of the European Community’s. So it wasn’t even a question of their standing up against blackmail. There was inside political pressure at work. There was a group of politicians in Holland who, as we heard later, were emotionally affected by what happened in the Netherlands during the Nazi period. They were reacting to that. Frankly, I don’t see how you can accept injustice inflicted by a person just because that same person was once subjected to the same thing. It does not justify what the Israelis were doing.”
The price rise, the production cutbacks and the embargo all happened at the same time, sending a shock through the industrialized world. The West needed to point a finger at someone and say, this is the villain. But, to accuse OPEC was inaccurate. And to accuse OPEC got the less than satisfying response, “It’s not us, it’s the Arab oil ministers acting independently.” So the world went looking for an Arab oil minister. And the cameras turned towards the most familiar face.
As the news magazines put it, this was suddenly the age of “Yamani or Your Life.”
“Our mutual inclinations are western,” he kept repeating, trying to make some sense of it for the western media. “Your interests and ours lie in working together for the betterment of all. We live together in the same world. We tried to make you see that you will have to meet us, the Arabs, half way. We tried to make you understand that perhaps if you do, we will all discover interesting things about one another and it will be a better world.”
But as lines formed at gas stations across the United States, the media wasn’t buying it. As one columnist observed, “Not since the Trojan war and the atomic bomb had a new war weapon been devised that was as devastatingly effective as the Arabs’ use of their newly acquired oil power.”
Even now, Yamani feels the need to explain. “You must understand that the production cutbacks and the embargo of oil to the United States were separate issues. The embargo was another type of political statement. It did not really imply that we could reduce imports of oil to the United States. You see, if oil from Saudi Arabia and all other Arab countries were to go everywhere except the United States, then someone else would compensate the United States for it. The world is really just one market. So the embargo was more symbolic than anything else.”
Totally symbolic, if you listen to Mahdi al-Tajir, the Bahrain-born, former United Arab Emirate Ambassador to the United Kingdom and today a leading Arab businessman in Europe and the United States. “In 1973 there was a lot written and said about the Arabs trying to use the oil weapon to influence the United States and the rest of the free world. But you don’t believe that, do you? Tell me where? Was there really an embargo? There was no embargo. There were no actual shortages. That was all said for local consumption. It was a lie we wanted you to believe.”
As far as Tajir is concerned, the only way oil could actually be used as a weapon is if the fields themselves were shut.
“You want to use oil as a weapon? You shut the fields. That’s the only way. But that did not happen in 1973. How could you say there is an embargo when you deliver oil to the port knowing that you have no control over where it then goes? When you speak of an embargo without shutting the oilfields, then that is not a true embargo. It is nothing but a symbolic gesture.”
Perhaps, he says, the Arabs merely wished they could have used oil as a weapon. And maybe some day they will. “I cannot find any reason why it might not happen one day. It will affect the producing countries more than the consumers because we don’t have any other source of income to live. But it all depends on who is running the Arab countries in the future. Today you have the Iran-Iraq war. You don’t believe for a moment, do you, that this war is going to come to an end and things will return to normal? Not in that region. We’d all be fooling ourselves to think, when the war ends, things there will be the way it used to be.”
*****