1) It would be an act of war & would be treated as such.
2) We'd be hurt, but we'd speed up work on alternatives. The US has large coal reserves & we don't touch them, cuz using oil is cheaper & cleaner.
3) Other resources in the world (think Canadian tar sands) would also be pushed into the world market.
4) Their population would starve, as most of their economies are oil based. Uprisings are more common when a population is starving & resources are needed to quell that sort of thing.
5) Bad mouthing the House of Saud is a popular pastime, but they increase production in a "West" friendly manner.
Iranian war games demonstrated Iranian consideration of the strategy you just raised. They will do it on their own schedule & when they do, game on! A decapitation strike will be among our first responses. Could be they're waiting for Chinese and/or Russian commitments. Meanwhile, using non-state actors is working to make the US as isolated as possible.
BTW, much of the early territorial wrangling in WWII involved securing energy resources. At the end of that war, Japan had been reduced to using most of its pine trees to keep its birds in the air. Kamikazes didn't have enough fuel to make it back "home" anyway. Germany had also resorted to using alternative fuels.
1. An act of war. So? 911 was an act of war. What would be different?
2. We need to speed up work on alternatives anyway, so that we can stop sending money to those who want to kill us.
3. Would this be bad?
4. As I said, they don't need our money. They can sell oil to China and get dollars and use them to buy food on the world market. But if they were in danger of starving I doubt they'd risk bringing the famine on by trying to kill us which would prevent us from buying their oil.
5. Sorry I don't understand this one or how it answers why they don't try to hurt us by cutting off the oil flow.
Thanks!
Does it make sense we give money to those who want to kill us? Does it make sense that those who want to kill us keep sending us oil, instead of cutting us off? I get the feeling we are better friends than we are being allowed to see. In high school guys would have fake fights just to get the student body stirred up. I wonder if nations have fake fights, sacrificing what they consider to be acceptable losses in terms of citizens, soldiers, assets, to profit elsewhere in some way.