Suspicions Rise That Saudi Oil Attack Came From Outside Yemen

Wall Street Journal ^ | Updated Sept. 14, 2019 8:10 pm ET | Dion Nissenbaum in Beirut , Summer Said in Dubai and Nancy A. Youssef in Washington

[Zhang Fei]

Saudi and American officials are investigating the possibility that attacks on Saudi oil facilities Saturday involved cruise missiles launched from Iraq or Iran, questioning Yemeni rebel claims of responsibility, people familiar with the matter said.

Leaders of the Houthis, the Yemeni rebels whom Saudi Arabia is trying to dislodge from the country’s capital, claimed they sent a squad of drones hundreds of miles into the heart of Saudi Arabia to carry out coordinated attacks on two of the country’s vital energy sites. If true, the attacks marked the most effective and far-reaching drone strikes carried out by outgunned Houthi forces in neighboring Yemen.

But officials around the globe investigating the attack questioned the Houthi claims and suggested the strike may have come from Iraq or Iran, to the north, rather than Yemen, to the south. Iran supports a host of Shiite militias in Iraq.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a tweet that “there is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen” and accused Tehran of launching “an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply.”

The Saudi Interior Ministry said Saturday that the facilities were hit by a drone attack, an account confirmed by people familiar with the strikes.

But Persian Gulf officials said experts were examining the possibility that the attackers used cruise missiles, either instead of or along with drones.

A strike on Saudi facilities from Iraq isn’t without recent precedent.

Earlier this summer, U.S. officials concluded that a May 14 drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s pipeline was launched from Iraq, not Yemen. At the time, Mr. Pompeo urged Iraq’s prime minister to contain the threat posed by Iran-backed forces in the country.

If Tehran carried out the attack directly, it would pose a new national security challenge for President Trump

[Zhang Fei]

Speculation is that the attack came from Iraq or directly from Iran. Iraq has denied it, but it's not clear, even if Iraqi officials are on the up and up, whether they're even aware of half the stuff that Iranian spies and infiltrators as well as Iranian-controlled Iraqi militias get up to.

[Psalm 73]

Saudi Arabia is fully capable of launching a counter attack against Iran.
Can't beat Iran toe-to-toe, but can certainly make them pay for the aggression.

We should stay out of this mess - it's a Sunni-Shia conflict.

[Gay State Conservative]

IRAN!

[for-q-clinton]

Could it be deep state trying to cause a recession to get rid of Trump?

[rrrod]

Iran with Russia backing.

[null and void]

"If Tehran carried out the attack directly, it would pose a new national security challenge for President Trump"

Mot our circus, not our monkeys, mot our problem.

[null and void]

Could it be deep state trying to cause a recession to get rid of Trump?

Sending oil prices through the roof is really going to impact US oil producers...

[Zhang Fei]

[Saudi Arabia is fully capable of launching a counter attack against Iran.]

---

Unlikely. They deliberately hobble their military. Because a military commander capable of striking Iran is capable of striking the royal palace and making himself king. The entire military is geared almost exclusively towards defense and internal security.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osman_II#Death
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14_July_Revolution

The problem with a strong military is the same as the problem encountered by the Roman Emperors who became puppets of their Praetorian Guards. For the Gulf nations, Ministry of Defense isn’t a politically-correct term for their military establishments. What we have is a War Department, as in we are geared for offensive war. Their militaries are really only capable of defense and riot control.

[Zhang Fei]

[Sending oil prices through the roof is really going to impact US oil producers... ]

---

The OPEC oil price spikes in the early 70’s put the kibosh on Jerry Ford’s re-election prospects just as surely as renewed price spikes in the late 70’s put the kibosh on Jimmy Carter’s re-election prospects. Oil consumers are a much bigger part of the electorate than oil producers. $4/gallon gasoline will help elect a Democrat in 2020.

[grania]

It doesn’t matter where it came from. It’ll be blamed on Iran. And Saudi Arabia will not be held accountable for anything it does that provokes its neighbors.

[Psalm 73]

"The entire military is geared almost exclusively towards defense and internal security."

Good point - hence the ineptness in Yemen.
Still - with over 200 F-15s they shouldn't be paralyzed.

[Zhang Fei]

In a way, they buy a lot of our gear so we have pre-cached spare parts and supplies if the balloon goes up. In a book about Desert Shield right after Saddam overran Kuwait, that’s exactly what the tripwire force of 82nd and 101st Airborne paratroopers that landed to discourage Saddam from overrunning the Saudis ended up doing - using American spare parts and supplies the Saudis had purchased from Uncle Sam. That’s what all the Saudi bashers don’t realize - 9/11 wasn’t the doing of the royals - they are reliant on us for external defense, and have no reason to !@#$ us over.

[DrPretorius]

The consensus is that the attack was launched from Iraq. The first Iraq War began in 1990. The second Iraq War began in 2003. We are almost into 2019. What has this country gotten for the trillions of dollars and thousands of servicemen lives and tens of thousands of servicemen casualties that we have squandered on the neo-con globohomo folly of Middle East conflict that we have conducted for thirty years? The madness of the USA being the world’s policeman and always being the tip of the spear of the neo-con globohomo New World Order simply must end.

I predict that if Trump allows himself to be sucked into yet another conflict then he will lose the next election and the good ol’ US of A will cease to exist. This never-ending warmongering that we have allowed the military-industrial complex of this country to pursue will be our ruination.

[dila813]

Look where it is located, it is right off the gulf no where close to Yemen

[null and void]

We shall see, there is a lot of wiggle room in reducing the legal burdens on industry and commerce that could keep the US pump price fairly low.

[Zhang Fei]

I respect your sentiments, but the idea that these wars are hyper-expensive does not stand up to scrutiny. As a % of the national economy, defense spending hasn't skyrocketed. In fact, it's actually down since the Reagan years. It's no exaggeration to say that these are small wars. I'm trying to think of a category of government spending that has gone down as a % of the economy since the Reagan years, and apart from defense spending, I can't come up with any. Anyway, here are a couple of charts illustrating the historical trends:

State, local and federal spending has skyrocketed, but it's not mainly because of defense expenditures.

[Cold War Veteran - Submarines]

True, but back then we didn’t have the indigenous oil/gas capacity we do now. A spike in prices will drive lots of $$ into the oil/gas industry and could serve to do just the opposite with today’s situation

[Zhang Fei]

[True, but back then we didn’t have the indigenous oil/gas capacity we do now.]

[kanawa]

it would pose a new national security challenge for President Trump

Nah

[Cold War Veteran - Submarines]

Well, I stand corrected. Thanks for the data.