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The ‘Sting’ 389

government ‘to use our oil resources in the battle once the fighting begins, or
even before that’. The following month the prime minister and heir apparent,
Shaikh Jabir ibn Ahmad Al Sabah, stated publicly that Kuwait would not
hesitate to use her oil as a weapon in another war with Israel. Shaikh Sabah ibn
Salim Al Sabah, the ruler of Kuwait, declared in mid-March, ‘When zero hour
comes, we shall use the oil as an effective weapon in the battle.’ He went on to

say that he was also prepared to manipulate the supply of oil to bring pressure
upon the United States to diminish its support for Israel. During the discus­
sions between the three-man OPEC committee and the oil companies’ rep­
resentatives in Cairo in April there was some talk of the use of oil for political
purposes, most of it, however, coming from Egyptian officials outside the
conference room. On a visit to Washington in late April, Yamani spoke of the

possibility that Saudi Arabia might not agree to raise oil production to meet the
needs of the United States unless ‘the right political atmosphere’ was created.
Three weeks later, on 13 May, Colonel Qaddafi asserted, in the course of a
six-hour press conference, ‘Undoubtedly the day will come when oil will be
used as the last weapon.’
The suggestion that the Saudi government might be contemplating a restric­
tion of oil supplies for political reasons was much more disturbing than the
gasconade issuing from Kuwait and Tripoli, particularly as it seemed to

originate with King Faisal himself. When the chairman of ARAMCO, R. W.
Powers, and the company president, Frank Jungers, paid a courtesy call upon
the king at the beginning of May, they were treated to a long lecture on the
subject of the worsening situation in the Middle East and the dangers to
American interests in the region presented by the continuing stalemate
between Israel and the Arabs. It was ‘absolutely mandatory’, Faisal told the
two oilmen, that the United States should do something to alter the course

which events were taking. Saudi Arabia was the only Arab country where
American interests were safe, but Saudi Arabia could not hold out much longer
against the anti-American feeling that prevailed in the rest of the Arab world.
He was, he said, ‘utterly amazed’ by the failure of the United States to
recognize where its true interest lay, especially as a ‘simple disavowal of Israel
policies and actions’ by the United States would go a long way towards
improving her image in Arab eyes. It seemed to him urgently necessary for
those Americans, whether individuals or corporations, who were friends of the

Arabs to bring their influence to bear within the United States to secure such a
disavowal.

What Faisal was driving at was made more explicit after the audience by the
king s chamberlain and confidant, Kamal Adham, who told Powers and Jun­
gers that Saudi Arabia was becoming increasingly isolated from the other Arab
states because of her friendship with the United States. Adham himself
elieved that President Sadat of Egypt intended to go to war against Israel,

opeless though the Egyptians considered their chances of military success to