Explaining Saudi Arabia's Inaction During the Gaza War: Why No Oil Embargo?

Abstract Why did Saudi Arabia not take direct action against US support for Israel in the Gaza war, given the enormous destruction and loss of life? In 1973, when Washington similarly backed the Israeli effort against Arab states, the kingdom and other regional countries raised the price of petroleum through an embargo and production cuts, sparking an oil crisis in the West. But the recent period has featured no analogous attempts to influence Washington. We argue that over the past five decades, a hegemonic coalition of governmental and private‐sector elites in the United States and Saudi Arabia developed a business‐security structure that prevented Riyadh from punishing the West over the Gaza war. Our analysis of empirical data and secondary sources shows that this dominant transnational investment bloc deeply integrated the kingdom into the US‐led global capitalist economy. As a result, imposing an oil embargo or other punitive measures was no longer viable.