President Hassan Rouhani says international forces should ‘stay away’ to de-escalate regional crisis
Iran has accused foreign powers of raising Gulf’s “insecurity”.
President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday denounced the presence of international powers in the Gulf, adding that Iran would propose a peace plan, after the US ordered reinforcements to the region.
Continue reading...Proposal by Iran-backed rebels ‘could send message of the will to end the war,’ says Martin Griffiths
The United Nations envoy for Yemen has welcomed an offer from the country’s Houthi rebels to halt all attacks on Saudi Arabia, saying it could bring an end to years of bloody conflict.
Implementation of the initiative by the Houthis “in good faith could send a powerful message of the will to end the war,” special envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths said.
Continue reading...Iran’s foreign minister not confident war can be avoided, but promises any conflict will not be ‘limited’
Iran has threatened to pursue and destroy any aggressor, and says war may be unavoidable in the wake of drone attacks on Saudi Arabian oilfields and a US troop build-up in the Gulf.
A day after the head of Iran’s elite Republican Guards said on state TV that “limited aggression will not remain limited,” the Iranian foreign minister told American network CBS that he was not confident that war could be avoided, while again denying Iranian involvement in the attacks on Saudi Arabia.
Continue reading...They must be laughing their socks off in Tehran. The days following last weekend’s attacks on Saudi oil facilities, blamed by the US on Iran, have seen an almost comical display of indecision, confusion and bluster by the leader of the world’s most powerful country. As a result, Iran looks stronger … and Donald Trump looks like a clown.
If Iranian leaders intended to call Trump’s bluff, they have succeeded – for now at least. The president’s immediate reaction to the attacks was to declare the US “locked and loaded” for retaliatory strikes. Then he remembered he’s opposed to fighting wars in the Middle East and hopes to be re-elected next year.
Continue reading...Trump has for now decided not to authorize an immediate military strike on Iran in response to attack
The Pentagon on Friday announced it will deploy additional US troops and missile defense equipment to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as Donald Trump has at least for now put off any immediate military strike on Iran in response to the attack on the Saudi oil industry.
The US defense secretary, Mark Esper, told Pentagon reporters this is a first step to beef up security and he would not rule out additional moves down the road. General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said more details about the deployment will be determined in the coming days, but it would not involve thousands of US troops.
Continue reading...Foreign minister’s comments further inflame tensions in Persian Gulf after oil attacks
Iran’s foreign minister has warned that any attack on his country after a series of missile strikes on Saudi Arabia’s oil industry would result in “all-out war”.
Javad Zarif also demanded that Riyadh hand over the evidence that it claimed proved the attack came from Iran, and not from Houthi-occupied Yemen.
Continue reading...Disentangling responsibility has been made so much harder by casual peacetime mendacity
Truth is notoriously the first casualty in war, but even more so in the run-up to a war.
The Middle East finds itself in the strange position at the moment where an undoubted crime has been committed, an apparent perpetrator has come forward providing elaborate supporting details of the weapon used, the motive and timing, but the victim refuses to believe the confessor, and instead accuses a third party.
Continue reading...Escalation is dangerous because infrastructure could be exposed to retaliation
Saudi Arabia’s state-of-the-art missile defence systems could do nothing to stop the swarm of drones and cruise missiles that struck some of its most important oil infrastructure at the weekend. They were designed to deal with different threats – and they were looking in the wrong direction.
The audacious strike against the Abqaiq petroleum processing facilities and Khurais oil field on Saturday morning – which the Saudis say was “unquestionably sponsored by Iran” – has exposed the limits of the defences of the world’s largest military spender per capita.
Continue reading...Defence spokesman calls on ‘international community to hold Iran responsible’
Saudi Arabia has ramped up the pressure on Donald Trump to respond to a devastating strike on two major oil installations, displaying drone and missile technology it insisted showed the attack was “unquestionably sponsored by Iran”.
At a press conference in Riyadh a Saudi defence spokesman claimed that 25 drones and cruise missiles were used in the attack on the Aramco facilities on Saturday, saying repeatedly they had been fired from the north, the direction of Iran.
Continue reading...US secretaries of state and energy both explicitly blamed Iran for the attack but Trump suggests US did not have definitive evidence
Donald Trump has said the US response to the attack on Saudi oil facilities will depend on the assessment in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, and downplayed US dependence on Middle East energy supplies.
The US secretaries of state and energy both explicitly blamed Iran for the attack. Unnamed US officials were also quoted in US media outlets as saying Iranian cruise missiles were used in Saturday’s attack on an oil field and processing plant. Estimates of the number of missiles used ranged from “nearly a dozen” to “over two dozen”.
Continue reading...Donald Trump has hinted that the US believes Iran is responsible for attacks on oil plants in Saudi Arabia over the weekend that raised fears of a fresh conflict in the Middle East. "It would look the most like it was Iran," he told reporters at the White House.
Iran has denied responsibility for the attacks which damaged the world's biggest crude processing plant in Saudi Arabia and triggered the largest jump in crude prices in decades. Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, suggested on Monday that "Yemeni people" were to blame.
Trump is letting Riyadh decide about whether to retaliate against Iran – and if that happens, Iranians would likely raise the stakes
The attack on Saudi oil facilities is the latest, most violent, example of an escalating series of gambits rival powers in the Gulf aimed at achieving their objectives by all measures short of all-out war.
But the chances of avoiding such a devastating conflict diminish each time the stakes are raised.
Continue reading...Tiny, cheap, unmanned and hard-to-detect aircraft are transforming conflicts across region
In the history of modern warfare, “own the skies, win the war” has been a constant maxim. Countries with the best technology and biggest budgets have devoted tens of billions to building modern air forces, confident they will continue to give their militaries primacy in almost any conflict.
Tiny, cheap, unmanned aircraft have changed that, especially over the battlefields of the Middle East. In the past three months alone, drones have made quite an impact in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and possibly now Saudi Arabia, where half the country’s oil production - and up to 7% of the world’s global supply – has been taken offline by a blitz that caused no air raid sirens and seems to have eluded the region’s most advanced air warning systems.
Continue reading...Saturday’s drone attacks severely disrupted global energy infrastructure and sent oil price soaring
Saudi pipelines, oil installations and tankers have occasionally been attacked over the past two years, but analysts say what happened in eastern Saudi Arabia in the early hours of Saturday morning is a much larger escalation: a hit to the jugular of the kingdom’s oil industry.
Continue reading...US president says he has ‘reason to believe we know the culprit’, as oil prices rise
Everything you need to know about the Saudi Arabia oil attacks
Donald Trump has said the US is “locked and loaded” and ready to respond to attacks on a petroleum processing facility in Saudi Arabia, as US officials said the evidence pointed to Iranian involvement.
The US president did not mention Iran, but wrote on Twitter that he had “reason to believe that we know the culprit” behind the series of attacks on the Abqaiq facility, which is the world’s largest petroleum processing plant. The attacks disrupted more than half of the kingdom’s oil output and will affect global supplies.
Continue reading...Foreign ministry counters accusations from US secretary of state with threats to US bases
Iran has dismissed US accusations that it was responsible for a series of explosive drone attacks on the world’s largest petroleum processing facility in Saudi Arabia that disrupted more than half of the kingdom’s oil output and could affect global supplies.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebel group claimed responsibility for launching waves of drones at state-owned Saudi Aramco facilities early on Saturday morning. But the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said there was no evidence the drones were launched in Yemen and accused Iran of “an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply”.
Continue reading...Despite no specific evidence of Iranian involvement, the US treat Yemen’s Houthi rebels as tame creatures of Tehran
The US secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s bald claim this weekend that Iran was responsible for the attack on the Saudi oilfields came with no marshalled public evidence, but dampens any likelihood that Donald Trump will countenance a meeting with Tehran in the near future or press ahead with tentative peace talks with Houthi rebels in Oman.
Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s foreign policy supporters in the Senate, was clear talks with Iran are now off the agenda saying: “The Iranian regime is not interested in peace – they’re pursuing nuclear weapons and regional dominance.”
Continue reading...Explosions halve Saudi output and reduce global production by 5%
Global supplies of oil are likely to suffer a “major jolt” following Saturday’s attack by a swarm of explosive drones on the world’s biggest oil processing plant in Saudia Arabia.
Major fires engulfed the Abqaiq processing facility and the Khurais oil field after the attack, for which Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed responsibility. They said they launched 10 drones with “intelligence cooperation from people inside Saudi Arabia”, according to the rebel-run Saba news agency. The rebels’ spokesman Yahya Saree said their operations “will expand and would be more painful as long as the Saudi regime continues its aggression and blockade” on Yemen, he said.The fires are now under control at both facilities, Saudi state media said.
Continue reading...Yemen’s rebel movement says it launched strikes that sparked huge fire at processing facility
Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for a drone attack on the world’s largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia which is vital to global energy supplies.
The attacks on the processor and a major oilfield, operated by Saudi Aramco, on early Saturday sparked a huge fire, the kingdom’s interior ministry said.
Continue reading...Houthi drones attacked the world's largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia and a major oilfield operated by Saudi Aramco early on Saturday, sparking a huge fire at a processor vital to global energy supplies. It was not clear if there were any injuries in the attacks, nor whether they would affect the country's oil production
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