Maps & Facts
Writing for The Intercept_ in early 2016, Jon Schwarz said that, “due to a peculiar correlation of religious history and anaerobic decomposition of plankton, almost all the Persian Gulf’s fossil fuels are located underneath Shiites.” The fields of Qatar and the UAE aside, this geological and confessional observation rings true, see map:
As the above map (especially when expanded), crafted by Dr Michael Izady, clearly reveals, much of Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth is located in a small sliver of its territory whose occupants are predominantly Shia. Schwarz points out that prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr lived in Awamiyya, the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil fields (just north-west of Sunni-ruled, Shia-majority Bahrain). Should this be of consequence? No, in a perfect world this confessional happenstance should be of no consequence but:
WMD or oil?
As Schwarz (2016) recalls, Winston Churchill once described Iran’s oil as “a prize from fairyland far beyond our brightest hopes.” In that same essay for The Intercept_ Schwarz adds that the UK was “busy stealing” the said natural resource.
It is said that one of the Saudi royal family’s principal concerns is that one day Saudi Shiites will secede, with their oil, and ally with Iran who are just across the Gulf (Schwarz, 2016). This fear has only grown since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq overturned Saddam Hussein’s minority Sunni regime, and empowered the pro-Iranian Shiite majority. Nimr himself said in 2009 that Saudi Shiites would call for secession if the Saudi government didn’t improve its treatment of them. The same tension explains why Saudi Arabia helped Bahrain, an oil-rich, majority-Shiite country ruled by a Sunni monarchy, crush its version of the Arab Spring in 2011.
Robber barons
Robber baron is a term first applied as social criticism by 19th century muckrakers and others to certain wealthy, powerful, and unethical 19th-century American businessmen. The term appeared in that use as early as the August 1870 issue of The Atlantic magazine.
By the late 19th century, the term was typically applied to businessmen who used exploitative practices to amass their wealth. Those practices included unfettered consumption and destruction of natural resources, influencing high levels of government, wage slavery, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors to create monopolies and/or trusts that control the market, and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors.
— Michael Lind, The Tablet
References
Axworthy, M. (2017, August 25). Islam’s great schism. New Statesman, 146(5381). https://www.newstatesman.com/world/middle-east/2017/08/sunni-vs-shia-roots-islam-s-civil-war
Harney, J. (2016, January 4). How Do Sunni and Shia Islam Differ?, Correction notice. The New York times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/world/middleeast/q-and-a-how-do-sunni-and-shia-islam-differ.html
Hubbard, B. (2016, January 4). Saudis Cutting Ties to Iranians as Tension Rises, Article. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/world/middleeast/iran-saudi-arabia-execution-sheikh-nimr.html
Learsy, R. J. (2011). Oil and Finance: The Epic Corruption. iUniverse.
Schwarz, J. (2016, January 6). One Map That Explains the Dangerous Saudi-Iranian Conflict. The Intercept_. https://theintercept.com/2016/01/06/one-map-that-explains-the-dangerous-saudi-iranian-conflict/