French President Emmanuel Macron at the G7 Summit this past August
French president Emmanuel Macron at a G7 Summit session this past August. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

As Donald Trump's administration scrambles to make sense of what exactly happened in Saudi Arabia this weekend (who deployed the drones that hit two major oil facilities and sent shock waves through the oil markets?), it might be profitable to consider France, and particularly the recent doings and pronouncements of its present leader, Emmanuel Macron. It seems he is moving to fill a void left by Trump's unwise destruction of Obama's geopolitical program, which was continuous with (and not a break from) the US's long-established foreign-policy objectives. And Macron's move to international prominence will prove to be an excellent distraction from his never-ending domestic problems—the yellow jackets movement, his fall in the polls, and so on. As a shift in leadership is occurring in Berlin (Angela Merkel is stepping down), and London is stuck in the swamp of Brexit, Paris has been presented with a golden opportunity to step on the global stage and make itself known.

Before the surprise attack in Saudi Arabia, there was another surprise attack that happened at the G7 summit in August. Macron invited Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to the event (which took place in Biarritz, France) without informing Trump's team. The US was simply blindsided by Macron and exposed as complete amateurs. And what Macron showed Europe is that France could run circles around the United States. And now this. The spectacular drone attack.

The structure of Iran's surprise G7 visit is the same as that of the surprise attack in Saudi Arabia. The first blindsided the US (and then the Kingdom); the second, the Kingdom (and then the US). As one left the world wondering how the US could be so in the dark of Marcon's maneuvering, the other left the whole world wondering how could 10 or so drones do so much damage so easily to the state's huge oil company, Aramco, which is preparing what many analysts predict will be the largest initial public stock offering in history (it's valued at $2 trillion)? And even if Iran was not directly involved in the strike, it's now very easy to imagine what would happen to the world's oil markets if the proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Yemen became an actual war, which would occur if the US attacked Iran.

A quick and excellent history of the proxy war in Yemen is outlined by Senator Chris Murphy in a series of tweets posted yesterday. Here's the first:

The Wall Street Journal's attempt to frame the attack as a consequence of the departure of the right's favorite hawk, John Bolton, from the White House completely misses the point. The US can't afford a war, not so much with Iran directly, but between Iran and Saudi Arabia—not while its president is entering election season with a recession looming and a trade war with China that's dragging down the economy. The destabilization of global oil markets would doom Trump's chances for reelection. All of this is as clear as day to a regular reader of even middling newspapers like the New York Times, and certainly to the intelligence community in Paris and Tehran.

And this brings me to another structural similarity between the G7 surprise and the surprise at Aramco's production facilities: the total absence of US intelligence. In both cases, what we see is a wobbling White House that's covering up its stunning lack of any actionable information with barking tweets. The Wall Street Journal, of course, wastes no time blaming Saudi intelligence for sleeping at the wheel:

The attack continues what is already a hot proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, an important U.S. ally. The extent of the damage raises doubts about how well the Saudis can defend against future drone assaults. Saudi intelligence and air defenses don’t seem up to the job. Saudi revenues would be hurt by a reduction in oil output, and uncertainty will complicate an initial public offering of the country’s national oil company, Aramco.
We can expect Saudi Arabia to be incompetent in matters of this kind. A monarchy is not the best way to run a 21st-century globally connected economy. But what of the US? How is it also in the dark about such a blatant attack on the soil of a major strategic ally?

From the Washington Post:

U.S. military investigators arrived at the attack sites in Saudi Arabia within the last day and are gathering intelligence to learn more about the weapons used, a U.S. official said Monday.

U.S. officials are working under the assumption that the strikes did not emanate from Yemen and do not believe they were launched from Iran, either, said the official, who is familiar with ongoing discussions about the attacks but was not authorized to speak publicly.

The military investigators are looking in the wrong place for the answers to this mess. What they should instead do is return to the US and visit the State Department and a number of buildings in Langley, Virginia. What they will find is that the former has been gutted by Trump, and the latter has a strained relationship with Trump. Add all of this up, and you will explain much of the US's incompetence in surprise 1 and surprise 2.

In case you do not know, Iran has already won this war, and, as a consequence, so has Macron, who, unbeknownst to the amateurs in the White House, began a proxy war with the US months ago.