The Application of the Oil Weapon in the Arab-Israeli Conflicts and its Consequences

Israeli-Arab wars in the Middle East, has had different effects on regional and global matters. The use of oil as a weapon, in several stages of the war, was applied by Arabs to defeat Israel. This policy made a regional conflict to a global crisis in 1970s. This study is going to track trends and factors that led to the application of oil as a weapon, based on a historical analysis, and then, survey the achievements of this policy and examine its consequences in the field of oil policy. According to the findings of this research, although using oil as a weapon caused dissatisfaction of the West as supporters of Israel in the short term, in the long run the oil weapon lost its efficiency due to the dependence of Arab countries on oil revenues on the one hand and the lack of solidarity and unity among them on the other as well as policies of countries such as USA. Therefore, after the last experience of Arab-Israeli war and its aftermath, the West was never challenged by oil weapons. They were even able to manipulate and to make policies in the field of oil in their interests.