The recent strikes on Saudi Arabian oil production facilities, likely perpetrated by Iran, were certainly not a good thing.

Though no one was killed, the attacks disrupted global energy markets in the short term , and mark a significant new escalation in the Iran-Saudi Arabia rivalry. Regional tensions are at a new high, and sabers are more than rattling. De-escalation is in the best interest of both the United States and the global economy, so President Trump should abandon “maximum pressure” and stop underwriting Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy mistakes.

Saudi Arabia may, at times, be a useful partner for America. We still do not want to pick sides in a centuries old Sunni-Shiite struggle, which is core to the tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Put simply, these attacks are not our problem.

Our security is not threatened, we have no mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia, and acting as their bodyguard only further emboldens them to behave recklessly. It could even drag the U.S. into yet another needless conflict in the Middle East, with all the costs and consequences another war inevitably entails.

Keeping Saudi Arabia happy isn’t worth an all-out war, and it’s not even close.

And war is precisely what we risk if the Trump administration responds to the strikes with military intervention. Iran has said as much, with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif threatening “all-out war.”

“I make a very serious statement about defending our country,” he said in an interview published Friday. “I am making a very serious statement that we don't want to engage in a military confrontation,” he continued, insisting both that Tehran does not want war and that it will never surrender to a U.S.-Saudi attack.

Iran is so far from being a peer competitor of the U.S. — its entire economy is smaller than the Pentagon’s annual budget — that the prudence we must exercise here is not about any sort of existential threat. To suggest they post a direct threat to us is overwrought in the extreme.

But it is hardly difficult to imagine a U.S. attack on Iran quickly turning into a debacle that makes the war in Iraq look like child’s play. Iran is a larger and wealthier country than Iraq was in 2003, plus it is far better defended. As dearly as the Iraq war cost us, Iran would be worse.

And for what? For Saudi Arabia? To keep oil profits flowing into the Saudi treasury?

After all, to say Riyadh is occasionally useful is not to say much. Saudi Arabia is a brutal theocratic dictatorship which oppresses its own people in indefensible ways. Its record on women’s rights and religious liberty is especially appalling.

In foreign policy, Saudi Arabia's U.S.-backed coalition intervention in Yemen is fostering terrorism and exacerbating the world’s most acute humanitarian crisis. And no one should forget the death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, an American resident murdered by the Saudi regime in a manner usually reserved for slasher films.

Additionally, U.S.-Saudi trade, often cited as a reason to maintain close ties with Riyadh despite this cavalcade of horrors, is becoming less and less important. Oil is a diminishing asset, and a long trend of rising U.S. oil production means we do not rely on Saudi oil supplies. Though Trump touts the Kingdom’s purchases of American weaponry, those sales are actually only $14.5 billion in a $20 trillion economy — hardly worth charging into war over.

Indeed, U.S. security and prosperity interests do not justify the current U.S.-Saudi relationship — and that relationship does not remotely justify escalating this situation into open conflict. These strikes were an attack on Saudi Arabia, not the U.S. Our interests and security are not in danger, and this is not our fight.

Even lesser measures, like expanding the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East or Trump’s decision to intensify his anti-Iran sanctions regime, risk doing more harm than good, particularly for U.S. troops and ordinary civilians in the region. Further strangling the Iranian economy with punishing sanctions will lead to more of this type of aggression, not less.

Rather than escalate further, Washington should abandon the “maximum pressure” policy toward Iran which has resulted in more aggressive behavior, the oil strikes included. Better yet, it should extricate the U.S. from the Iranian-Saudi clash altogether.

Bonnie Kristian is a fellow at Defense Priorities and contributing editor at The Week.