By September 15, 2026, the United States had become the subject of particularly tense discussions in three countries at once—Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and Turkey. The reason was not a single diplomatic initiative, but the overlap of two wars with the global energy market. Donald Trump’s administration is simultaneously demonstrating its willingness to continue exerting military pressure on Iran while demanding that Kyiv stop striking Russian oil refineries, explaining this by citing a global diesel shortage. To Riyadh, Ankara and Kyiv, this looks like the same American rule: support for partners’ security lasts only until it comes into conflict with energy prices, U.S. domestic politics and the president’s personal negotiating style. (aa.com.tr)
The broadest common thread in local reactions is distrust of the American separation of crises. Trump publicly linked high diesel prices specifically to Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries and said he had asked Volodymyr Zelenskyy not to strike facilities producing diesel. Yet the Ukrainian reaction centers on a contradiction obvious to Kyiv: the Middle East is already experiencing the consequences of the U.S.-Iranian conflict, including risks to oil routes, while Washington is proposing that Ukrainian strikes on the aggressor’s infrastructure be viewed as the decisive factor. As Ukrinform reports, an unnamed Ukrainian official called this logic absurd: the White House had previously emphasized that America itself was capable of supplying the market with the necessary volumes of oil. (ukrinform.ua)
For Ukrainian audiences, the dispute over refineries is not a technical matter of global trade, but a dispute over the right to self-defense. Russia’s oil-refining capacity is seen as part of the country’s war economy: it supplies the army with fuel, generates export revenue and ensures Moscow’s ability to continue the war. Washington’s request to refrain from attacks is therefore read not as a step toward a symmetrical peace, but as an attempt to restrict one of Kyiv’s few remaining tools for putting pressure on the enemy’s rear. Even the neutral-toned Ukrainska Pravda notes that this is not Trump’s first such demand; earlier, he described Ukrainian strikes on refineries as an escalation. (pravda.com.ua)
From the Saudi perspective, the same story is reversed: the central issue is not Ukrainian military logic, but the vulnerability of the Persian Gulf’s oil architecture itself. Attacks and threats targeting export routes, as well as the closure of Saudi Arabia’s East–West Pipeline following a strike from Iraq, made the issue concrete rather than abstract: the route was an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz and could carry millions of barrels a day. The Turkish Anadolu agency directly describes the possible effect as millions of barrels of supply disappearing from the market. (aa.com.tr)
The Saudi reaction is noticeably more cautious than the Ukrainian one. It involves less public opposition to Washington and more of a pragmatic question: can America simultaneously be a security guarantor, a participant in a war with Iran and an arbiter of the oil market? In an article titled “Policeman of Two Straits?”, Saudi journalist and editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat Ghassan Charbel observes that the U.S.-Iranian memorandum increasingly resembles not an understanding, but a “memorandum of misunderstanding.” His key point is that even if the military campaign has slowed Iran’s nuclear program, it has not dismantled the regional network of Iranian influence—and therefore has not removed the threat to sea lanes, oil infrastructure and U.S. allies in the Gulf. (elaphmorocco.com)
That is why the American line is perceived in Riyadh in two different ways. On the one hand, the United States remains an indispensable supplier of weapons and an external power capable of deterring Iran. On the other, Trump’s statements that countries allegedly failing to help the United States should compensate Washington for the cost of protecting oil shipping make that protection resemble a commercial contract whose terms can change in the middle of a crisis. On September 14, Trump said that large quantities of American weapons were being supplied to U.S. forces in the Middle East, while simultaneously linking the protection of oil flows to future compensation from other countries. (aa.com.tr)
The Turkish debate combines both of these fears but adds a third: the fear of becoming not a subject of diplomacy, but a transit platform for decisions made by great powers. In Ankara, American policy is assessed not only through the prism of Iran and energy prices, but also in terms of Turkey’s ability to derive political capital from its position between NATO, the Middle East, the Black Sea and the Caucasus. In Anadolu reports from early September, the conflict over Hormuz is described not simply as a struggle for freedom of navigation, but as a struggle over who has the right to set the rules for passage: if control becomes entrenched with Iran, Tehran’s military losses could turn into political influence; if an American corridor becomes permanent, Iran would lose that resource. (f.aa.com.tr)
This also explains Turkey’s characteristic duality. Ankara is interested neither in an Iranian victory over the United States nor in an endless American military campaign that drives up energy costs, increases instability along its borders and narrows the space for independent mediation. But it sees an opportunity to increase its own weight through American inconsistency. When Trump praised Turkey in Ankara in July as a militarily powerful country, spoke of a possible review of sanctions restrictions and promised to consider the issue of F-35s, the Turkish government presented this as confirmation of a special channel between Erdoğan and the White House. (aljazeera.net)
In recent days, the Turkish view has become more sober: personal closeness between leaders is useful, but it does not replace institutional guarantees. This is also evident in the emphasis on regional security mechanisms. Anadolu analyst Gökhan Ereli, assessing the Istanbul meeting on the Mecca Defense Alliance involving Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, wrote that it demonstrated the three countries’ readiness to assume responsibility for regional peace and security. In the context of the U.S.-Iranian confrontation, this can be read as an implicit but important signal: Washington remains a necessary partner, but the region does not want to depend on whichever deal formula suits the American president today. (f.aa.com.tr)
The most unexpected similarity between the Saudi, Ukrainian and Turkish reactions is that in all three countries the United States is now perceived primarily as a power managing interconnected risk markets. For Kyiv, America’s priority of keeping diesel prices down could constrain the war against Russia. For Riyadh, the American war with Iran could itself threaten the oil exports that the United States promises to protect. For Ankara, the same instability is both an economic blow and a diplomatic window of opportunity.
Only the conclusions differ. Ukraine is increasingly arriving at the view that military resilience requires less dependence on Washington’s shifting political mood. Saudi Arabia is not abandoning the American security umbrella, but is seeking to supplement it with regional ties and its own security routes. Turkey, meanwhile, is trying to turn the instability of American policy into an argument for a multi-vector approach: remain in NATO and negotiate with the United States, but not allow Washington, Tehran or Moscow to determine its role on their own. In this sense, the current discussion about the United States is not simply a reaction to Trump. It is a debate over whether an ally can simultaneously be a protector, a participant in a conflict, a trading partner and a tough negotiator—and how much independence countries closest to the front line are willing to sacrifice for such protection.
