Maybe that particular execution was indeed aimed at inflaming the conflict to have the old external enemy at the center of much internal attention in a time when subsidies have been cut for the first time in a long time and the budget deficit was shocking. Who knows?
Personally I'm inclined to believe that the recent Saudi pumping is not just a clever play aimed at destroying shale. That might well be part of their thinking, maybe even be the internal offical line as clever sounds always better then an obvious one: Cutting production might have well caused a still bigger short-term budget deficit. If they decided to cut, they would have needed to do so quite deeply to have an effect.
The oil market has it's specifics but just look at almost every other commodity out there. Be it iron ore or coal, most producers are in a rat race to the bottom, trying to cut costs and increasing production in some cases. So the Saudi decision to keep pumping is hardly singular for those lowest in the cost curve...
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