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When Prince Turki al-Faisal suggested last year that the House of Saud would join in the U.S.-led sanctions against Iranian oil, by seeking to displace Tehran’s oil exports from the global economy, he was not referring to a novel idea. Indeed, Saudi Arabia has led two prior oil wars against Iran. As detailed in Andrew Scott Cooper’s The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East, the first Saudi oil war against Iran was intended to weaken the Shah’s modernization programs. The Saudis feared Iran’s rise as a regional power, and wanted to carve out space for independent decision-making in OPEC, which at the time was dominated by Iran.