Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran

Saudi Fires From Outerspace (picture from NASA)

There are four countries have been in the news lately, intertwined in a complex little dance that had resulted in the temporary shutting down of 5% of the world oil production. Lets us look at the four countries for a moment:

………………………………………Iran……….Iraq……….Saudia Arabia……..Yemen
Population (millions)……………….83…………37……………..33………………….28
GDP (billions)……………………..484………..250……………762………………….28
Per Capita Income……………..5,820………6,116………..23,566………………..925
% Shiite……………………………..90+…………60…………10-15%…………….35-40%

Now, there are also five other states in and around the Persian/Arabian Gulf (Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE and Oman. The most populous and richest of these is UAE with 9.6 million people and a nominal GDP of 433 billion. Some of these states, like Bahrain, are majority Shiite.

While there might be some retaliatory strikes in response, this simple comparison shows that:

Iran is the big guy in the region.
Saudia Arabia is probably not in position to wage war against Iran. It may conduct a military response, but nothing pushing towards something that looks like full-scale war.
1. Especially as they do not have a common border except over the Gulf.

P.S. Based upon Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)

………………………………………Iran………..Iraq…………Saudia Arabia……..Yemen
GDP (billions)……………………….484…………250…………..762……………………28

Per Capita Income………………..5,820………6,116……….23,566………………….925

GDP PPP………………………….1,540…………734………..1,924……………………73

Per Capita Income………………18,504……..17,952………56,817………………..2,380

P.P.S. A related relevant earlier blog post:

Air Forces in the Persian/Arabian Gulf

Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

Articles: 1455

3 Comments

Neal Bliven

September 16, 2019 / 12:24 pm Reply

Not having a common border (except the wide gulf border) might make Saudi Arabia less hesitant to attack Iran by air (since a massive counter-attack by armor and infantry forces of Iran would be less likely).

What’s the airpower comparison (including missles as well as manned aircraft)?
- Christopher A. Lawrence
  
  September 17, 2019 / 7:42 am Reply
  
  Hey Neal, I already did this back in May. That blog post is here:
  
  https://dupuyinstitute.dreamhosters.com/2019/05/21/air-forces-in-the-persian-arabian-gulf/
  
  The answer is 142 air superiority and multi-role Iranian jets compared to 595 controlled by the seven Arab states lining the Gulf. In most cases, the Arab nations have better quality aircraft…and 33 Ground Attack aircraft vice 100+. No question who will be able to establish air superiority.
russell1200

September 17, 2019 / 7:38 am Reply

The Iranian Air Force Chief was just fired for failing to report undetected Israel penetrations into their airspace. The Israelis were supposedly testing out their capability to hit Iranian targets undetected.

So Israel would need to be added to the list.

And Syria is a near proxy of Iran, so you can add them as well. Although the loss ratio of Syrian to Israeli’s in air-to-air combat is something like 70 to 0.