I’m pretty sure there was an invisible red line there.
If the Iraqi army had made the run from their border to Riyadh, there wasn’t anything in the way to stop them. Tanks LIKE hundreds of miles of open desert. It took weeks for us to get enough resources in-country to defend Riyadh from any attack. By mid-September, they could probably have taken the city, but it would have cost them. Even with C5’s, it takes time to move enough resources, tanks, ammo, fuel, beans and bullets, to someplace as remote as Ar-Riyadh. Ain’t much worth going there for anyway. IMHO, at least.
I used to joke with one of our admin guys that his hometown, Clovis, NM, was my choice for rectum of the world. Then we went to Riyadh. Had to apologize to him. It sure isn’t Clovis, after all. I figured that all we had to do to punish Saddam was to MAKE him take over Riyadh, and live there.