Page 426 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The ‘Sting’ 423

members of OPEC since the early weeks of 1974. While the sequence of events
over the past five years is well known, they do not form sufficient of a pattern to

give shape to a narrative. The remainder of this chapter, therefore, will be
given over to reflections upon some of the dilemmas which continue to face the
Western world in treating with the oil-producing states of the Middle East.
The embargo upon the shipment of oil from Arab countries to the United

States was lifted on 18 March 1974, and that upon oil exports to the Nether­
lands, Portugal and South Africa some time later. The memory of the
embargo, however, and of OPEC’s successful double ‘sting’ in the latter
months of 1973, persisted, especially in the Arab world, where it served to
heighten the mood of Muslim revivalism which has been sweeping the Middle
East this past decade and more, and of which the embargo and the ‘sting’

themselves were an expression. The reaction of Western Europe to the oil
offensive, as we have seen, was an unedifying exhibition of sauve qui peut. Old
alliances, mutual obligations, common decencies, all were trampled under foot
in the headlong rush of the powers of Europe to propitiate the Arabs and

ingratiate themselves with the shah. It must rank as the most humiliating
episode in the history of Western Christendom since the collapse of the last
Crusade - which is exactly how the Arabs saw it. ‘It is our revenge for Poitiers!’
exulted an official of an Arab oil state in December 1973, harking back over
twelve centuries to the defeat of the Arab armies by Charles Martel in 732. ‘We

shall do as Samson did: we shall destroy the temple with all its occupants,
ourselves included!’ spluttered Colonel Qaddafi in late October 1973, adding,
in an echo of Ahmad Zaki al-Yamani’s threat of the previous February,
Europe should watch out for the catastrophe which lies in wait for it. ... I have

made my preparations - as have the other Arabs - to deprive Europe com­
pletely of oil. We shall ruin your industries as well as your trade with the Arab
world.’ Similar rodomontade, it will be recalled, was to be heard in the
remaining weeks of 1973 from, among others, Houari Boumedienne, the
Algerian president, and Abdul Rahman al-Atiqi, the Kuwaiti oil minister.
Outbursts like these reveal the true nature of the emotions and aspirations

which underlay the oil embargo, the production restrictions and the quadrup­
ling of oil prices, emotions which still continue to govern the conduct of the
Arab oil states and Persia in their intercourse with the West. Stripped of their
specious justifications about past Western exploitation and the intolerable

a ront t0 Arab susceptibilities afforded by the existence of Israel, the actions of
t e Arabs and the Persians before, during and since 1973, if placed in their
istorical, religious, racial and cultural setting, amount to nothing less than a
the^A ttemPt 10 Christian West under tribute to the Muslim East. To
e Arabs, the peculiar conjunction of economic circumstances since the
autumn of 1973 has offered a singular opportunity to behave as though the

P°Jer and grandeur of the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates has been restored.
or e former shah it provided a chance to behave as though the Safavid