Hoover Institution | Stanford University

THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD

Lords of Mecca
Glimpses of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Vision

Tristan Abbey

PROLOGUE

And of His Signs are the ships that sail in the sea like mountains.
—Quran 42:32

The year is 1932. It is a warm February day in Jeddah as the convoy heads out into the desert.
Warm, but not blistering.

All four vehicles are Fords imported from the United States. It’s a tight squeeze for the more
than two dozen passengers, crammed in with extra tires, spare jugs of motor oil and gaso-
line, and camping supplies. The caravan hugs the coastal fats of Tihamah for as long as it
can, but eventually the Hijaz Mountains must be crossed. As the elevation increases, the
engines groan progressively louder. Deep indentations in the rocky terrain and dark, crusty
detritus testify to the region’s volcanic origins. Finally, afer a week on the road—far longer
than advertised—the convoy arrives at its destination, the rugged area of Mahd adh Dhahab,
southeast of Medina.

Afer a makeshif camp is established, a team of surveyors, led by the American engineer
Karl Twitchell of Vermont, begins the careful process of estimating the site’s geological
resource potential. Samples are collected and sent back to the lab; maps and photographs
are furnished to the client. The assay results, as taciturn technicians are wont to report, are
“satisfactory.” The American-led team has struck gold. Not “black gold,” that overwrought
euphemism for the petroleum the same Vermonter will soon be hunting on the eastern side
of the Saudi peninsula (and eventually will fnd), but elemental gold, atomic number 79: the
Latin aurum, the Persian zar, the Arabic dhahab.

An Essay from The Caravan Notebook

August 2024
 The client in question is not just anybody: he is Abdullah Suleiman, the “Minister of Everything.”
Although not a prince, Sheikh Suleiman has earned a place in the House of Saud as its fnan-
cial mastermind. With the Holy Kingdom’s inauguration mere months away, we can specu-
late that he is determined to wield his infuence to investigate a legend he has heard all his
life—that of Solomon’s Mines in the biblical books of Kings, long rumored to lay somewhere
along the Red Sea. Could the dilapidated mines once in operation at this remote spot, roughly
equidistant from the two holiest sites in all of Islam, be revived as it is named—as the Cradle
of Gold? 1

THE PROMISING LAND

Navigation is dangerous along this whole coast of Arabia, which is without harbors, with bad
anchorages, foul, inaccessible because of breakers and rocks, and terrible in every way.2
—Anonymous merchant, ca. ad 60

Nearly a century afer the grand reopening of the Cradle of Gold, a new “Minister of Everything”
is attempting to remake Saudi Arabia.3 Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has far greater
fnancial resources than Sheikh Suleiman could ever have mustered. I argue that much of that
agenda—perhaps the greater part of it—amounts to a long under-resourced efort by Riyadh
to rebalance the Kingdom’s center of gravity, not by taking weight of the Eastern Province
side of the scale but by adding it to the side of the Red Sea. The reasons for this shif
are many.

The ofcial Saudi agenda over the remaining years of the 2020s is bound up in Vision 2030,
a largely domestic policy strategy document frst released in 2016 and invariably described
as “ambitious,” with good reason.4 Barack Obama welcomed its announcement in 2016, a
position reiterated by Donald Trump in 2017 and by Joe Biden in 2022.5 Supporting the
Saudi plan is part of the US State Department’s country strategy,6 and the US Commerce
Department has advertised it as a business opportunity for American companies.7 Writing
in the Hoover Institution publication, The Caravan, Karen Elliot House noted succinctly,
“The Crown Prince’s Vision 2030 reforms are good for the Kingdom—and also good for
the US.”8 In another publication for the Hoover Institution in 2018, Dennis Ross put it
this way:

I believe we have such a large stake in the success of the Saudi National Transformation Plan.
As one Saudi minister said to me when I visited the kingdom, “Welcome to our revolution dis-
guised as economic reform.” Saudi Vision 2030 is about remaking the kingdom. It is not just
about diversifying the sources of revenue away from exclusive reliance on oil, but about over-
hauling the nation’s educational system, reducing the power of the religious establishment,
recognizing the role women must play in modernizing the state, and creating opportunities

2 TRISTAN ABBEY U LORDS OF MECCA

 for young people to reshape the economy. With nearly 70 percent of the population under
age thirty, the potential for change—not to mention its need—clearly exists. If the Saudi efort
succeeds—and there are big ifs, particularly given the difculty of transforming the political and
social culture within and coping with Iranian-driven threats from outside—its implications will
be felt not just in Saudi Arabia. They will be felt throughout the region, with the existence of a
model that might be applied more widely.9

Human development goals may be laudable, but they are notoriously difcult to track and
quantify. The plan’s three thematic pillars—a vibrant society, a thriving economy, and an
ambitious nation—are so generic they could be applied to any developing country’s aspira-
tions. Vision 2030 is a mixture of a reform agenda, economic planning, quotidian investment,
and sheer vanity. There is also probably a degree of bureaucratic repackaging of of-the-
shelf ideas: the Saudis have nine fve-year plans sitting on that shelf, issued periodically
from 1970 to 2014.

Beyond the snickering headlines warning of budget cuts, delays, and scale-backs, something
important is unfolding that should not be discounted.10 Of the fve initial “giga-projects” envi-
sioned in Vision 2030, two are Red Sea projects. First, Red Sea Global includes the tour-
istifcation of the Red Sea itself and the development of Amaala, an insular resort network
under construction on the Saudi coast just over a hundred miles from the Egyptian resort of
Sharm el Sheikh. Second, Neom, an alleged zero-carbon set of residential and industrial sub-
projects to be constructed near the Gulf of Aqaba in between Sharm and Amaala, features
a “linear” city, what is supposed to be “the world’s largest green hydrogen plant,” and a ski
resort, among other projects. In terms of sheer cost—$500 billion or some eventual multiple
thereof—Neom dwarfs everything else in Vision 2030. In addition, two of the four special
economic zones that the Saudis are launching will be based on the Red Sea: King Abdullah
Economic City in Mecca Province (Makkah) and the Jizan Special Economic Zone, hugging
the border with Yemen across the sea from Eritrea. A new desalination plant at Rabigh is
also under construction on the coast between Yanbu and Jeddah, where the Burj Khalifa-
exceeding Burj Jeddah skyscraper is under development.

To be sure, the Persian Gulf remains a critical part of the Kingdom. The bulk of Saudi oil
production occurs in the Eastern Province, and most crude exports fow through the
Strait of Hormuz. Much of Saudi Arabia’s value-added production, such as the refnery at
Ras Tanura and the processing complex at Abqaiq, is situated on the Persian Gulf coast.
Vision 2030 calls for tens of billions of dollars to be spent on other projects, as well as on
the greenifcation of Riyadh, which is more central but lies closer to Ras Tanura than it does
to “sea-side” Jeddah. The Kingdom’s closest allies are the gulf-side Bahrain, Kuwait, and the
United Arab Emirates, the production felds and facilities of which are located entirely on the
Gulf. The US military presence has always cast its gaze frst across the Persian Gulf, whether
from Doha or Dhahran, before it checks on the Red Sea. The shif to the Red Sea is best
understood as a broadening of the Kingdom’s horizons, rather than a clumsy pivot.

HOOVER INSTITUTION U STANFORD UNIVERSITY 3

 A TECHNICAL INTERLUDE

And the gold of that land is good.

—Genesis 2:12

“Energy is the backbone of the global economy,” according to the World Bank website.
Energy is also a useful prism for examining Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea strategy. The general
reader need not be intimidated by the technical details, which are easy enough to grasp
and illuminating.

Petroleum (“oil”) exists in vast reservoirs underground and undersea. There is no single
chemical formula for unrefned oil (“crude”) because hydrocarbon chains naturally bond with
all sorts of impurities, such as nitrogen, sulfur, and perhaps other metals, in various propor-
tions. Depending on the precise composition and pressures in play, oil can be viscous like
tar or fuid like water, and black as night or transparent as soda. Wells are used to extract this
oil from the subsurface; they ofen extract natural gas (also hydrocarbons) along with it. Both
crude oil and natural gas need to be processed before they can be put to good use in the
modern economy. Practically, this means that heat and chemical processes are applied
to flter, separate, and treat these hydrocarbons in various subcomponent streams. This
work is accomplished at oil refneries and natural gas processing facilities, where chemi-
cal reactions are made to occur based on the characteristics of the “raw” feedstock and
the desired output. The result is the more familiar array of oil products, such as jet fuel
and gasoline; natural gas liquids, such as ethane and propane; and pure methane, to which
the term “natural gas” most commonly refers and which can be used in gaseous form to run
everything from power plants to kitchen stoves. Much of these products are diverted straight
to the transportation sector for near-immediate consumption in automobiles and airplanes and
ships, whereas others are used to build asphalt roads or by the petrochemical industry (using
remarkably similar chemical techniques) to make things like plastic. The entire value chain is a
sequence of mixing and matching, heating and cooling, separating and bonding.

Underpinning much of geopolitics in the past century is the fact that hydrocarbons can only
be transported in a handful of ways. Crude oil is a relatively easy case: pump it into tanks
onboard ships, trucks, and trains or into pipelines, and transport it in virtually every instance
to an oil refnery. The refned products are then transported from the refnery to consumer
markets in the same manner, but require their own pipelines that are optimized for specifc
products, rather than for crude oil. Natural gas is more difcult to transport. Its gaseous nature
makes it more voluminous than oil, so pumping it as gas into a tank car is an inefcient way of
moving not much energy to some destination. As a result, natural gas is typically transported
by pipeline to a processing facility. The only other way to move any signifcant volume of
natural gas any considerable distance is to supercool it into liquid, which reduces its volume,
and to load the now liquefed natural gas (LNG) onto a ship (an LNG carrier), which can take
the cargo to yet another facility that heats it back up into gas again—and probably sends it
through a pipeline in the end anyway.

4 TRISTAN ABBEY U LORDS OF MECCA

The key point for the general reader is that oil and gas are made valuable by a combination of
chemistry and logistics that turns the raw material into value-added products. All this requires
very tangible and very specifc infrastructure.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

The sacred food of the Red Sea with its bed of scarlet sands . . . where the Sun, who sees all
things, gives rest to his tired steeds and refreshes his immortal body in warm outpourings of
sof water.11
—Aeschylus, ffh century bc

Beginning in 1970, the Saudi government began publishing fve-year development plans. As
mentioned, there were nine adopted prior to Vision 2030, which contains what would have
been the Tenth Development Plan (2015–19), the Eleventh Development Plan (2020–24), and
the Twelfh Development Plan (2025–29). As the name implies, these are exercises in central
planning, even if they are replete with aspirational calls for greater privatization and market
solutions that have been achieved with some success in certain areas.

All the fve-year plans—every single one—state the intention of diversifying the Saudi Arabian
economy and thereby government revenue beyond oil. Implicit in the diversifcation agenda
is a prudent expansion of sea-side infrastructure to complement the gulf-side infrastructure
that necessarily exists near the most productive Saudi oil felds. The First Development Plan
(1970–75) explained, “Dependence on oil is the obverse of the advantages derived from the
abundance of oil. . . . Moreover, it has led to the situation where further development of the
economy over the coming decades is mainly dependent on growth in revenues and foreign
exchange earnings from oil; a situation that must gradually be changed by diversifying pro-
duction, exports, and sources of government revenue.” This frst plan previewed port
capacity expansion at Jeddah and Jizan on the sea side and at Dammam on the gulf side.
It also noted “important mineral potentials” in the Arabian Shield, a geological formation
underpinning the western Arabian provinces.12

The Second Development Plan (1975–80) re-upped the initial port capacity expansions and
added to the docket fve minor ports on each of the two coasts. Two institutions created in
this period proved especially important: the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu in 1975
and the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) in 1976. The commission functioned
as a “superagency” that directed the construction of two new industrial port cities—Jubail
(gulf side), which would operate near the Ras Tanura oil refnery and associated oil felds, and
Yanbu (sea side), the much smaller maritime counterpart that serves Medina in the way that
Jeddah services Mecca. The plan focused on petrochemicals, refneries, fertilizer, and metal
production in the Eastern Province. Some 20 percent of the budget was reserved for the
East–West pipeline (Petroline), which to this day transports crude oil from Abqaiq to Yanbu;
an accompanying natural gas liquids pipeline that follows the same route; a Red Sea export

HOOVER INSTITUTION U STANFORD UNIVERSITY 5

 refnery; and some sea-side petrochemical capacity. SABIC was responsible for much of this
industrial activity and is still in operation.13

The Third Development Plan (1980–85) called for the establishment of a natural gas “gather-
ing” capability, which is far more crucial than it may sound. As discussed, natural gas is ofen
produced alongside crude oil. For the frst several decades of Saudi oil production, not much
was done with the “associated” gas production. Even today in other places around the world,
such gas is vented into the atmosphere or burned (“fared”). Under the Third Development
Plan, the Saudis constructed a program to pipe the gas to processing centers, where it was
“sweetened” by removing sulfur and methane; it was then piped to fractionators, where natu-
ral gas liquids (ethane, propane, butane) could be separated out and used for other purposes,
such as petrochemicals.14 This system served as “the blood and oxygen” of the new indus-
trial port cities Jubail and Yanbu that were launched in the Second Development Plan.15 New
series of oil refneries were also built in Jeddah and Riyadh and planned for Jubail, Yanbu,
and Rabigh (the latter two being on the sea side). In general, the development of Jubail pro-
ceeded faster than in Yanbu.

By the time of the Fourth Development Plan (1985–90), the Saudis could boast of fve major
ports: Dammam and Jubail on the Gulf and, on the Red Sea, Jeddah, Jizan, and Yanbu.
Through these ports fowed products generated at the then-six operating oil refneries;
equally importantly, these ports also served as receiving stations for the importation of
material and equipment necessary to construct new infrastructure and industrial capacity.
The plan noted,

Based on its experience the Kingdom recognized the dual character of the oil wealth: oil can
be (and in the long run will be) a source of economic strength; however, it can also be a source
of weakness at times, as demand for oil is subject to both cyclical movements in the world
economy and technological innovations. Hence, to reduce the resulting uncertainty in plan-
ning parameters and the vulnerability of dependence on a single commodity, the Government
is determined to expand its oil-related industries (refneries and petrochemicals) and to develop
the other producing sectors of the economy through a full range of measures.16

Here it is important to note that moving “beyond oil” in the mind of Saudi central planners
then meant moving beyond crude oil, not oil per se. Refned products and petrochemicals are
simply value-added goods derived from crude oil; to borrow from the lexicon of physics, the
result of work being performed on it. The Fourth Development Plan, however, did include a
genuinely non-oil-focused discussion of mineral expansion opportunities and suggested that
the “fnite nature” of oil and gas would “necessitate the development of viable alternatives,
such as nuclear energy.”17 (We revisit nuclear energy later.)

During the following two decades of central planning, much of the preceding became a
familiar refrain. The Fifh Development Plan (1990–95) referred to “a vigorous policy through-
out successive development plans to make optimal use of its oil resources,” noting a head-
count of nine refneries at the time (up from six) and the expansion of petrochemical export
capacity.18 The Sixth Development Plan (1995–2000) asserted that “sustainable long term

6 TRISTAN ABBEY U LORDS OF MECCA

development requires a reduced dependence on the exploitation of depletable crude oil
resources as the main source of national income.”19 (Note, again, the caveat: depletable
crude oil resources, not oil per se.) By the Seventh Development Plan (2000–2004), there
were eight major ports (up from fve in the Fourth Development Plan). Central planners
prophesied that the petrochemical industry would “spearhead the Kingdom’s diversifca-
tion eforts.”20 The Eighth Development Plan (2005–9) called for expanding the oil refnery
in Riyadh and the port of Jeddah, increasing refned product storage at Jizan, and building
new chemical plants at Yanbu.21

The Ninth Development Plan (2010–14), the last plan before the unveiling of Vision 2030,
contained three ideas that stood out. The frst two were a pair of rail projects: one would
link Mecca-Medina-Jeddah via high-speed passenger trains (operational as of 2018), and the
Landbridge Project would link Damman to Jeddah, from the Gulf to the sea.22 The third idea
harkens back to a brief mention in the Fourth Development Plan:

Given the current state of technology, two sources stand out: solar, and nuclear energy.
However, nuclear energy is probably the best option for providing an important share of the
energy needs of the Kingdom, which requires establishing the infrastructure and the legislative
and education systems needed to pave the way for entry into this feld, so that the Kingdom can
begin building its frst nuclear power plant within the next decade.23

That frst nuclear power plant has yet to begin construction, but it has been in various stages
of active discussion for years. Its location also remains to be determined, though the recently
constructed nuclear power plants of the United Arab Emirates are located (obviously) on
the Gulf. The drive for nuclear power is partly fueled by economics—the Saudis currently
use petroleum-fred power plants for about one-third of their electricity generation, which is
extremely inefcient—and partly by prestige.

The preceding developmental history highlights several recurring themes. There is the shif
from crude oil to refned products, the construction of all kinds of capacity (industrial, petro-
chemical, port, etc.) on the Red Sea in addition to the Persian Gulf presence, and the need
to develop infrastructure linking oil and gas produced in the Eastern Province to processing
centers distributed around the country. The Tanker War of the 1980s, the Persian Gulf War, the
invasion of Iraq in 2003, the long-running battle against al Qaeda, and periodic fare-ups with
the Iranians testify to the value of geographic diversifcation of any and all types of energy
processing and industrial capacity. The ports near the Hijaz are not immune to threat from
the Houthis, for example, but the threat is not catastrophic.

There is a general understanding that some sort of non-crude-oil future awaits the Kingdom.
There are dramatic aspirations, some achieved successfully and others making slow prog-
ress. One such recurring aspiration—extracting mineral wealth—is worth examining in some
detail. I noted that the First Development Plan (1970–75) referred to the Arabian Shield mineral
potential and that the Fourth Development Plan (1985–90) included an extended discussion of
mining opportunities. In fact, minerals have popped in and out of Riyadh’s aspirational plan-
ning ever since Sheikh Suleiman’s gambit at the Cradle of Gold (Mahd adh Dhahab).

HOOVER INSTITUTION U STANFORD UNIVERSITY 7

 Saudi Arabia and Sudan launched the Red Sea Commission in the 1970s with the aim of
developing untold mineral wealth just of their respective coasts. Aramco World, the epony-
mous company’s ofcial magazine, described this opportunity in 1981: “According to geolo-
gists, the entire Arabian Peninsula is slowly rotating counterclockwise, and—over geological
lengths of time—gradually closing the Strait of Hormuz, narrowing the Arabian Gulf, and
widening the Red Sea. As a result of this tectonic movement, deep rifs have opened at the
bottom of the Red Sea through which mineral components from within the Earth are being
spewed into the seawater by volcanic processes.”24

Explorers quickly identifed one particularly promising area, termed Atlantis II Deep, with
an estimated $3 billion in copper, silver, and zinc deposits.25 The valuable portion of these
“mineral components” would be mixed in with nearly 100-foot layers of mud—lots of mud,
lots of salty mud, lots of salty, fne-grained mud with “the consistency of sof toothpaste,” as
Aramco World would later observe.26 As is common in the mineral industry, separating the
desired commodity from the unwanted rock is a time-intensive and ofen complicated indus-
trial process in its own right. These resources remain “untold” to this day because they were
never developed, despite much talk about a feasibility study and joint pilot program in the
1980s that never seemed to get of the ground and into the sea.27 In 1986, the US Geological
Survey reported that the Saudis had already spent $40 million to explore Atlantis II Deep and
that another $120 million would be required for development.28 It is possible that chemical
sampling revealed low-quality mineral ores, or that banal bureaucratic politics killed the
funding, or that the mud problem could not be solved, or that the mysterious mining of the
Red Sea in the summer of 1984 (allegedly by Islamic Jihad) that damaged more than a dozen
ships made insurance unafordable, or that the unstable political situation facilitating Omar
al-Bashir’s autocratic rise in Khartoum (culminating in the 1989 coup d’état) proved too much
to bear. Yet, the suggestion of a joint Saudi–Sudan minerals project in the Red Sea has never
gone away completely.

In addition to the aborted Red Sea efort, the Saudis have sought to develop other domestic
mining sites. On the sea side, Mahd adh Dhahab was developed alongside a second gold
mine at Sukhaybarat, some 150 miles to the northeast (putting the latter more into the central
region than the Red Sea coast). A state-owned ofcial mining corporation called Maaden was
created in 1997 to handle these projects and soon developed others, including a phosphate
play in the north and an aluminum complex on the Persian Gulf. Most recently, the Saudis
have announced their willingness to invest $15 billion29 in mining projects around the world
and to spend nearly $200 million on mining exploration domestically.30

A TURBULENT HISTORY

There was a very great war, one brother with another . . . and they fought to be Lords of Mecca.31
—Itinerary of Ludovico di Varthema, ad 1510

8 TRISTAN ABBEY U LORDS OF MECCA

Far from a strategic backwater, the Red Sea fgures prominently in the geopolitical his-
tory of human civilization—and not just because of Moses. In ancient times, the empires of
the Greeks, Hellenes, Romans, and Byzantines included Egypt, but never extended farther
south into Nubia (present-day Sudan) and Ethiopia. The Roman province of Arabia Petraea—
present-day Suez and Jordan—did not extend eastward into the deep desert, and a Roman
invasion of Arabia Felix (present-day Yemen) utterly failed. Tacitus writes of Emperor Nero’s
“secretis imaginationibus agitans” vis-à-vis the Roman Empire’s eastern provinces, princi-
pally Egypt.32 Lists of the Red Sea’s villages are provided in ancient geographies by Pliny the
Elder, Strabo, and Ptolemy, with minor variations among them. There is tremendous uncer-
tainty about the precise location of many of these “ports”—they did not blossom into great
cities that survive to this day—but it is generally accepted that they served as waypoints in the
spice trade; for example, Leuke Kome on the Arabian coast and Myos Hormos on the Egyptian
coast.33 In late antiquity, Christian Ethiopia—its capital Axum was approximately “a week’s
journey” from Adulis on the Red Sea—invaded southern Arabia in response to a massacre of
Christians in ad 523, only to be evicted by the Persians a few decades later. Axum invaded
Nubia in the third and fourth centuries, and Arabs crossed the sea and captured present-day
Eritrea in the seventh and eighth centuries.34

The period of Islamic conquest is well known as either side of the northern Red Sea fell
under the sway of a succession of caliphates. The Hijaz, with its vast “maritime frontage
on the Red Sea,” imported gold and grain from newly Islamicized Egypt and reconstituted
a canal linking the Red Sea to the Nile—a pharaonic predecessor to the Suez Canal (and,
for that matter, to the SUMED crude oil pipeline that currently links the Red Sea to the
Mediterranean).35 In the 1180s, the Crusader Reynald of Châtillon raided the Arab coast-
line and blockaded Aqaba with a small feet of ships that his camels had carried overland
to the Red Sea, apparently threatening the Islamic holy sites.36

In the modern period, the area witnessed a volatile mix of imperial rivalry, holy war, and great
power competition. The Ottoman Empire and the Egyptian Khedive nominally controlled the
region but were unable to unify it and maintain persistent and consistent authority. Egypt
acquired Suakin and Massawa, port cities along the Red Sea, from the Ottomans in 1865, but
the Khedive went bankrupt afer a failed war against Ethiopia.37 Britain forcibly brought Egypt
under its control and forged the oddly named “Condominium” with Egypt and the Sudan; one
scholar amusingly described this concept as “a means of evading the international controls
and privileges which made Egyptian government such a nightmare.”38

Numerous machinations in the late 1800s propelled the African coast of the Red Sea into the
international forefront. In 1868, Britain invaded Ethiopia to rescue some missionaries, march-
ing across the countryside, waging war, and withdrawing quickly. Meanwhile, the Suez Canal
opened for operations in 1869 at the northern end of the Red Sea. Italy acquired Assab near
the Bab el Mandeb strait at the southern end in 1882 (from the Rubattino Company, which
purchased the area in 1869), invaded present-day Eritrea in 1885, and cobbled together a trio
of Somaliland sultanates in the 1889–91 period. Italy, however, was defeated in its attempt

HOOVER INSTITUTION U STANFORD UNIVERSITY 9

 to conquer Ethiopia in 1895–96. Ethiopia, Britain, and Egypt all fought the Sudanese Mahdi,
a multistage war that included the infamous slaughter of Gordon at Khartoum in 1885 and
Kitchener’s revenge at Omdurman in 1898. This culminated in the Fashoda crisis, in which
Kitchener confronted French forces and precipitated the latter’s withdrawal via Djibouti on
the Horn of Africa.39

The Red Sea of the twentieth century has been neither more placid nor more disconnected
from global afairs—the reverse, in fact. Britain blocked Russian access to the Suez during
the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), forcing the Baltic Feet to circumnavigate Africa—in the
manner of Vasco de Gama—to relieve the Japanese siege of Port Arthur.40 The Italo-Ottoman
War (1911–12) featured Italian naval raids on Ottoman ports along the Yemeni coast. During
World War I, the wild tales of Lawrence of Arabia center on the Hijaz and the Sharif of Mecca,
despite the cinematic shots of desert camels, with Lawrence in Seven Pillars of Wisdom
describing Yanbu as “half a city of the dead.”41 The Red Sea has fgured into the calculations
of European powers eager to establish grand geographies—the French efort to stretch a hori-
zontal line from West Africa to Djibouti, the British vertical line from Egypt to Kenya, the Italian
spazio vitale from the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Aden. In the 1930s, Italy attempted to pull
the Saudis into its orbit, donating cannon and aircraf, training Arab pilots, and purchasing
camels for use in Ethiopia.42 One Italian soldier, unnamed, described Eritrea as “a tormented
landscape like a stormy sea moved by the wrath of God.”43 Italy hoped to construct a modern
naval port at Kismayo in Somaliland, which would have used German steel and iron in a vain-
glorious attempt to link the European Axis powers with the Imperial Japanese Navy operating
in the Indian Ocean.44

The more familiar post-1945 era has continued to feature great violence, ofen far from the
eyes of Western media. The Suez Canal Crisis of 1956 fgures prominently in many histories
of Britain’s imperial decline. In the 1960s, Egypt invaded Yemen but ignominiously withdrew.
Ethiopia and Eritrea fell into civil war, and the Saudis blockaded the Straits of Tiran, Israel’s
access point to the Red Sea from the port of Eilat.

Over the past hundred years, the region has been remarkably unstable in terms of political
governance of individual countries. Egypt has changed rulers many times—from the Khedive
to the British, to the Fouad monarchy, to the Revolution—as has Yemen and its various itera-
tions. The instability of Somaliland is attested by the number of Somalilands there have been:
French, British, and Italian. Ethiopia, although notoriously never colonized by a European
power, has not had direct access to the sea since Eritrean independence in 1993. Sudan has
witnessed coups, revolution, and the creation of a brand-new country, South Sudan, which
also has no direct access to the sea.

Only Saudi Arabia has managed to preserve its coastline under the rule of one steady power,
the House of Saud. The only change was coincident with the founding of the Kingdom as the
preeminent peninsula power: in 1934, it acquired by force of arms the provinces of Asir, Jizan,
and Najran from Yemen.

10 TRISTAN ABBEY U LORDS OF MECCA

THE STRATEGIC UNDERCURRENT

[Jeddah] is no more than a mart between Egypt and India.45

—Carsten Niehbuhr, ca. 1774

The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 mandated that each presidential administration pro-
duce an annual “national security strategy report,” commonly referred to as the NSS, for
the United States.46 Eighteen such documents have been produced to date, beginning in the
Reagan administration. Every president has published at least one.47 Yet, the term “Red Sea”
appears only a single time across nearly four decades of reports—in the Clinton administra-
tion’s NSS published in July 1994 and then only in reference to coastal pollution.48 This will
probably change.

Present-day concerns in the region include recurring attacks by Houthi rebels against inter-
national shipping; direct Houthi missile or drone attacks against Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the
United Arab Emirates, as well as retaliatory strikes; persistent instability in the Horn of Africa
caused by or refected in the prevalence of piracy, Islamic militants, and refugee fows (e.g.,
from Eritrea to Saudi Arabia); and civil war in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia. As recently as
2008, Eritrea and Djibouti went to war over disputed territory, costing more than a hundred
lives and prompting the deployment of Qatari peacekeepers. And, of course, there was the
Saudi-led (largely Arab) intervention in Yemen over much of the past decade.

This pattern suggests that greater emphasis on the Red Sea is not purely a question of energy
security and portfolio diversifcation vis-a-vis the persistent Iranian threat. Building redun-
dancy and alternative logistics mitigates such risks to some degree. The Saudis have histori-
cal reasons to spend more time on the Red Sea, which are in addition to Persian Gulf risk
mitigation, not instead of it. The Red Sea has challenges of its own. Witness, for instance, the
retaliatory Israeli airstrike in July 2024 against the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah—the
very same port, incidentally, that Nasser used to deploy Egyptian troops in his ill-fated inva-
sion of Yemen.49

Mecca is ofen described as a city “in the middle of the desert,” but it is only about forty miles
from the Red Sea coast. That description is more appropriately applied to the Empty Quarter,
the Rub’ al Khali. To the extent that Quranic references to “the sea” refer to an actual sea, it
is likely the Red Sea, not the Persian Gulf. Per Islamic tradition, the Prophet Muhammad, who
(with his merchant-uncle) never traveled farther north than present-day Syria, may have set
his eyes on the Mediterranean, but he spent his life in the Hijaz. To spare them from persecu-
tion in Mecca, Muhammad dispatched a group of his followers in the early days of Islam to
seek refuge across the Red Sea in Christian Ethiopia, where they were reportedly welcomed
with open arms.

As the most stable and wealthy of all the countries that share a coastline on either side of the
Red Sea, the Kingdom may fnd it tempting to play the role of a regional power (or at least a

HOOVER INSTITUTION U STANFORD UNIVERSITY 11

 regional power broker). Arguably this is already occurring: consider the Yemen intervention,
fnancial support to Egypt and Jordan, cooperation with US-led annual military exercises
involving the port of Yanbu and elsewhere, and Saudi Arabia’s leadership of its own multi-
national Thunder from the North military exercise in 2016. If some sizable fraction of Vision
2030 bears fruit alongside the long-standing Saudi drive to expand industrial capacity on
the Red Sea, including more desalination, petrochemicals, and shipping, then the Kingdom
may be forced to play this role in greater depth than ever before—if for no other reason than
to defend its own interests. Security deployments of various kinds may also be required if
Saudi Arabia develops a real portfolio of mining interests in Africa, for example. Indeed, its
investments in LNG export terminals on a global scale—much of the cargo of which may transit
the Suez Canal and Bab el Mandeb—may tempt a further widening of the strategic lens.

In the near future, the Kingdom will not be able to “pivot” from the Persian Gulf, where its
crude oil production will always remain. However, by focusing more attention on the Red
Sea as a strategic region, it returns to the land of its birth, the land it never truly lef as the
Custodian of the Holy Mosques, the land from where, atop the mountains of the Hijaz, the
Prophet surely gazed on this Sea.

Truly, here, I am a disposer of men,

A very dragon among them.
From a glimpse of my claw they recoil.
Kings come kissing the back of my hand, while
The poor fnd an oasis in its palm.50
—Qatada ibn Idris, Emir of Mecca, ca. ad 1200

NOTES
1. K. S. Twitchell, Saudi Arabia: With an Account of the Development of Its Natural Resources (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1947), 142–48. I have taken the liberty of mildly dramatizing Twitchell’s narrative.
For biographical details about Suleiman, see Mohammed Almana, Arabia Unifed: A Portrait of Ibn Saud
(London: Routledge, 2023, originally published by Hutchinson Benham, 1980), 199–225 (Kindle edition).
2. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First
Century, trans. and annotated by Wilfred H. Schof (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912), 30.
3. For the application of the term “Minister of Everything” to Mohammed bin Salman, see Elizabeth Dickinson,
“Saudi Arabia’s Plan to Win over the White House,” Foreign Policy, May 17, 2017.
4. Vision 2030, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/media/quudi5wq/vision-2030
-overview.pdf.
5. Readout of the President’s Meeting with Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Deputy Crown
Prince and Minister of Defense of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, White House Ofce of the Press Secretary,
June 17, 2016, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-ofce/2016/06/17/readout-presidents
-meeting-mohammed-bin-salman-bin-abdulaziz-al-saud-0; Readout of the President’s Call with King
Salman bin Abd Al-Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, White House, January 29, 2017, https://trumpwhitehouse
.archives.gov/briefngs-statements/readout-presidents-call-king-salman-bin-abd-al-aziz-al-saud-saudi
-arabia/; The Jeddah Communique: A Joint Statement Between the United States of America and the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, White House, July 15, 2022, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefng-room/statements
-releases/2022/07/15/the-jeddah-communique-a-joint-statement-between-the-united-states-of-america
-and-the-kingdom-of-saudi-arabia/.

12 TRISTAN ABBEY U LORDS OF MECCA

6. US Department of State, Integrated Country Strategy: Saudi Arabia, July 11, 2022, https://www.state.gov
/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/ICS_NEA_Saudi-Arabia_Public.pdf.
7. US Commercial Service, The United States of America, July 2020, and Saudi Arabia—75 Years of Partnership,
https://www.trade.gov/sites/default/fles/2020-07/US%20Commercial%20Service%20Saudi%20Arabia
%202020%2006%2023%20%28002%29_0.pdf.
8. Karen Elliott House, “The Importance of Putting aside the Personal in US-Saudi Relations,” The Caravan,
Hoover Institution, March 7, 2023, https://www.hoover.org/research/importance-putting-aside-personal-us
-saudi-relations.
9. Dennis Ross, “Countering Islam in the Middle East,” Hoover Institution, July 17, 2018, https://www.hoover
.org/research/countering-islamism-middle-east, p. 6.
10. Ahmed Al Omran, “Saudi Arabia Scales Back Flagship Projects,” Financial Times, May 13, 2024.
11. Cited in The Geography of Strabo, 1.2.27, trans. Horace Leonard Jones, Loeb Classical Library (London:
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917), 123. Strabo attributes this quotation to Aeschylus in Prometheus Unbound,
which exists only in fragmentary form.
12. First Development Plan (1970–75), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Economy & Planning, https://
www.mof.gov.sa/en/about/OldStratigy/First%20Development%20Plan%20-%20Chapter%201%20-%20
Introduction-%D9%85%D8%AF%D9%85%D8%AC.pdf, pp. 21, 22, 194.
13. Second Development Plan (1975–80), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Economy & Planning, https://
www.mof.gov.sa/en/about/OldStratigy/Second%20Development%20Plan%20-%20Chapter%201%20-%20
Development%20Goals-%D9%85%D8%AF%D9%85%D8%AC.pdf. For the regional cost breakdown, see
p. 182 (Table IV-18). For the port capacity additions, see pp. 441–50. In addition, the SABIC story is told
in Andrea H. Pampanini, Cities from the Arabian Desert: The Building of Jubail and Yanbu in Saudi Arabia
(Greenwood, CT: Praeger, 1997), 61–67. The term “superagency” is used on p. 7 of Cities from the Arabian
Desert.
14. Third Development Plan (1980–85), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Economy & Planning, https://
www.mof.gov.sa/en/about/OldStratigy/Third%20Development%20Plan%20-%20Chapter%201%20-%20
Development%20And%20Development%20Planing%20In%20Saudi%20Arabia-%D9%85%D8%AF%D9
%85%D8%AC.pdf. For an overview of the gas-gathering system, see pp. 174–79. For oil refneries, see
pp. 179–81.
15. Pampanini, Cities from the Arabian Desert, 12.
16. Fourth Development Plan (1985–90), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Economy & Planning, https://
www.mof.gov.sa/en/about/OldStratigy/Fourth%20Development%20Plan%20-%20Chapter%201%20-%20
Development%20And%20Planing%20In%20Saudi%20Arabia-%D9%85%D8%AF%D9%85%D8%AC.pdf,
p. 8 [emphasis in original].
17. Fourth Development Plan (1985–90). For the mineral discussion, see pp. 165–76. For the reference to
nuclear power, see p. 148.
18. Fifh Development Plan (1990–95), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Economy & Planning, https://
www.mof.gov.sa/en/about/OldStratigy/Fifh%20Development%20Plan%20-%20Chapter%201%20-%20
Planning%20And%20Development%20In%20Saudi%20Arabia-%D9%85%D8%AF%D9%85%D8%AC.pdf,
pp. 178–79.
19. Sixth Development Plan (1995–2000), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Economy & Planning, https://
www.mof.gov.sa/en/about/OldStratigy/Sixth%20Development%20Plan%20-%20Chapter%201%20-%20
Planning%20And%20Development%20In%20Saudi%20Arabia-%D9%85%D8%AF%D9%85%D8%AC
.pdf, p. 40.
20. Seventh Development Plan (2000–2004), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Economy & Planning,
https://www.mof.gov.sa/en/about/OldStratigy/Seventh%20Development%20Plan%20-%20Appendix
-%D9%85%D8%AF%D9%85%D8%AC.pdf, pp. 134, 319.
21. Eighth Development Plan (2005–9), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Economy & Planning, https://
planipolis.iiep.unesco.org/sites/default/fles/ressources/saudi_arabia_eighth_development_plan.pdf,
pp. 88, 91, 152–53, 497.

HOOVER INSTITUTION U STANFORD UNIVERSITY 13

 22. Ninth Development Plan (2010–14), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Economy & Planning,
https://www.mof.gov.sa/en/about/OldStratigy/Ninth%20Development%20Plan%20-%20Appendix
-%D9%85%D8%AF%D9%85%D8%AC.pdf, pp. 601–2; Colin Forman, “Firms Win Saudi Landbridge,”
MEED, December 2023, https://www.meed.com/frms-win-saudi-landbridge.
23. Ninth Development Plan (2010–14), 521.
24. George W. Windsor, “The Other Minerals,” Aramco World 32, no. 4 (July/August 1981): 25–29.
25. US Geological Survey, Minerals Yearbook 1982 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Ofce), 792.
26. Glyn Ford and Jonathan Simnett, “Silver from the Sea,” Aramco World 33, no. 5 (September/October 1982):
22–25. This article reports the mud layers to be ninety-eight feet thick.
27. US Geological Survey, Minerals Yearbook 1983 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Ofce), 654.
28. US Geological Survey, Minerals Yearbook 1986 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Ofce), 740.
29. Gracelin Baskaran, “Saudi Arabia Has a Strategic Advantage in Sourcing Critical Minerals from Africa,”
CSIS, December 5, 2023, https://www.csis.org/analysis/saudi-arabia-has-strategic-advantage-sourcing
-critical-minerals-africa.
30. Aziz El Yacoub, “Saudi Arabia Earmarks $182 mln for Minerals Exploration in Mining Push,” Reuters,
January 10, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/saudi-arabia-allocates-182-mln-mineral
-exploration-incentives-mining-minister-2024-01-10/.
31. The Itinerary of Ludovico di Varthema of Bologna, trans. John Winter Jones (London: Argonaut Press,
1928), 18.
32. Cornelius Tacitus, The Annals, ed. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, https://www
.perseus.tufs.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0078%3Abook%3D15%3Achapter
%3D36. See Annals 15:36.
33. For a systematic examination of archaeological sites in the region, see Getzel M. Cohen, The Hellenistic
Settlements in Syria, the Red Sea Basin, and North Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006),
305–43.
34. See the entries on “Nubia” and “Ethiopia” in Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World, ed.
G. W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 433.
35. Michael Cook, A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2024), 100.
36. Thomas Asbridge, The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (New York:
Ecco, 2010), 324–25.
37. P. M. Holt, The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881–1898: A Study of Its Origins, Development, and
Overthrow (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), 3.
38. The quotation continues: “In practice the British governor of the Sudan was appointed by the Khedive,
but the choice was invariably British and the senior appointments in the Sudan were also flled by Britons.
The position was indefnable legally, but whenever foreign diplomats applied to Cromer or the British
government for enlightenment they were merely referred to the Condominium Agreement. Britain had long
since learned the value of vague constitutions.” Patricia Wright, Confict on the Nile: The Fashoda Incident
of 1898 (London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1972), 213.
39. Margaret MacMillan, The Road to 1914: The War That Ended Peace (New York: Random House, 2013),
142–47.
40. MacMillan, The Road to 1914, 175.
41. T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (London: Wordsworth Editions, 1999).
42. Nir Arielli, Fascist Italy and the Middle East, 1933-40 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 60, 63–64,
86–87.
43. Michael Glover, An Improvised War: The Ethiopian Campaign 1940–1941 (London: Leo Cooper Press,
1987), 63.
44. Robert Mallett, The Italian Navy and Fascist Expansionism 1935–1940 (London: Frank Cass, 1998),
73, 155.

14 TRISTAN ABBEY U LORDS OF MECCA

45. Carsten Niebuhr’s Travels through Arabia and Other Countries in the East, trans. Robert Heron, vol. I
(London: T. Vernor, 1792), 235.
46. Section 603 of PL 99-433, 50 U.S.C. § 3043 (October 1, 1986).
47. Historical Ofce, Ofce of the Secretary of Defense, National Security Strategy, 1987–2017, https://
history.defense.gov/Historical-Sources/National-Security-Strategy.
48. A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement, White House, July 1994, https://history
.defense.gov/Portals/70/Documents/nss/nss1994.pdf. On p. 26, it states, “Pollution of the coastal areas
in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aqaba has degraded fsh catches and hindered
development.”
49. Carrie Keller-Lynn, Benoit Faucon, and Saleh al-Batati, “Israeli Long-Distance Strike on Houthis Leaves
Yemeni Port Ablaze,” Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2024, https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel
-strikes-houthi-controlled-port-city-in-yemen-2d84ab06.
50. Gerald de Gaury, Rulers of Mecca (London: George G. Harrap, 1951), 85.

The publisher has made this work available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs
license 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0.

Copyright © 2024 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

The views expressed in this essay are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily refect the
views of the staf, ofcers, or Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution.

30 29 28 27 26 25 24 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

HOOVER INSTITUTION U STANFORD UNIVERSITY 15

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

TRISTAN ABBEY
Tristan Abbey is a senior fellow at the National Center for Energy Analytics.
He previously served in staf positions at the National Economic Council, the
National Security Council, and the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural
Resources.

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