> That functionally cedes Emirati and Saudi sovereignty to Iran. Today it's $2mm. Tomorrow it's anything else Tehran requires.
the point is besides full scale invasion which Saudi and UAE won't do, there is no reliable way to remove threat of Iran striking oil infra, they just don't have way to deal with the problem.
> full scale invasion which Saudi and UAE won't do
Don't need a full-scale invasion. Just a land grab on the coasts. They can't do it alone. But they can provide troops (and mercenaries) as well as staying power where the U.S. cannot.
> there is no reliable way to remove threat of Iran striking oil infra
Barring invasion: mutualize the damage. Pot Iranian tankers. Seed their ports with mines. Israel locking up the Caspian and the UAE and Saudi Arabia locking up Hormuz to Iran changes the calculus of the war in Tehran and makes suing for peace–not with America and Israel, but with the Gulf–tenable.
> Don't need a full-scale invasion. Just a land grab on the coasts. They can't do it alone. But they can provide troops (and mercenaries) as well as staying power where the U.S. cannot.
they couldn't win this against much closer, smaller and weaker Yemen. They just don't have functional military.
> mutualize the damage. Pot Iranian tankers. Seed their ports with mines.
I don't believe they will do this because they love oil money too much, unlike Iranian regime, which is idiologically/religiously driven, and endured for many years of various attacks and sanctions.
Bomb shit. The Saudi and UAE militaries aren't anything to sneeze at. (The area cross the Strait from the UAE is majority Arab [1].)
I think it's generally good strategy to not provoke new belligerents against oneself.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnicities_in_Iran