This paper offers an international history of the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo, based on research in the U.S. archives and on Arab press sources and interviews gathered during research in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. In October 1973, the Arab petroleum-exporting nations enacted a series of production cuts in response to U.S. support for Israel in its war with Egypt and Syria. The production cuts were followed by a total embargo on oil exports to the United States. This paper argues that in instituting the embargo and production cuts, the Arab nations were not following a plan agreed upon in advance. The key Arab oil-producing states sought to avoid a total embargo until late in the second week of the war, and their policies were contingent on the outcome of the fighting and the U.S. diplomatic response. Inter-Arab politics were particularly important in this regard. As the war went on, the Gulf states came under increasing pressure from other Arab countries to use oil in the conflict, and were also under pressure to back up their own rhetoric of solidarity with Egypt and Syria. The United States had received numerous warnings of a possible embargo in the months leading up to October 1973, but during the war the Nixon administration disregarded these reports and pressed ahead with a massive effort to resupply Israel with arms. Nixon and Kissinger failed to take Arab warnings seriously because they believed that talk of the “oil weapon” was merely emotional or was designed for domestic political consumption, and they misinterpreted diplomatic signals from Saudi Arabia to mean that there would be no embargo. The Nixon administration was also motivated by concerns about American credibility in the Cold War, which they believed outweighed the threat of an oil crisis. The embargo had a great psychological impact on the United States, shocking Americans who were accustomed to cheap and abundant energy, while the production cuts were a major factor behind the skyrocketing price of oil from $3 per barrel in October 1973 to nearly $12 per barrel in December. Although the embargo did not succeed in forcing the United States to abandon Israel or compel Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, it had lasting consequences for the global oil market, and helped lead the United States to reevaluate its relationship with the Arab world and its role in the Middle East peace process.