US planned '73 Arab invasion: UK Secret Service report

By: Nabil Raza

LONDON: Spy chiefs of Britain warned after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war that they believed the United States might invade three oil-rich Arab States namely Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi to seize their oil fields.

This was made known by records released Thursday. Details of a Joint Intelligence Committee report from December 1973 were released under rules requiring that some secret documents be made public after 30 years.

According to the report Washington was so angry over Arab nations' earlier decision to cut oil production and impose an embargo on the United States that seizing oil-producing areas in the region was “the possibility uppermost in American thinking.”

The 1973 embargo and production cuts, used by oil-rich Arab nations as a means to pressure the United States and Western Europe, caused a major global energy crisis and sent oil prices skyrocketing.

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