{"id":231200,"date":"2019-09-16T22:17:47","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T02:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=231200"},"modified":"2025-01-08T11:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T16:29:08","slug":"trump-it-looks-like-iran-hit-saudis-no-military-option-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/09\/16\/trump-it-looks-like-iran-hit-saudis-no-military-option-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump: It looks like Iran hit Saudis, no military option yet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
FILE: Donald Trump speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at the Prescott Valley Event Center in Prescott Valley, Arizona. (Photo<\/a>: Gage Skidmore\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump declared Monday it \u201clooks\u201d like Iran was behind the explosive attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities. But he stressed that military retaliation was not yet on the table in response to the strike against a key U.S. Mideast ally.<\/p>\n

Oil prices soared worldwide amid the damage in Saudi Arabia and fresh Middle East war concerns. But Trump put the brakes on any talk of quick military action \u2014 earlier he had said the U.S. was \u201clocked and loaded\u201d \u2014 and he said the oil impact would not be significant on the U.S., which is a net energy exporter.<\/p>\n

The Saudi government called the attack an \u201cunprecedented act of aggression and sabotage\u201d but stopped short of directly pinning blame on Iran.<\/p>\n

Iran denied involvement.<\/p>\n

Trump, who has repeatedly stressed avoiding new Middle East wars, seemed intent on preserving room to manoeuvr in a crisis that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had immediately called Iran’s fault. Pompeo said Saturday, \u201cIran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump, too, had talked more harshly at first. But by Monday afternoon he seemed intent on consultations with allies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was an attack on Saudi Arabia,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn’t an attack on us, but we would certainly help them,\u201d he said, noting a decades-long alliance linked to U.S. oil dependence that has lessened in recent years. The U.S. has no treaty obligation to defend Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

Trump said he was sending Pompeo to Saudi Arabia \u201cto discuss what they feel\u201d about the attack and an appropriate response.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the U.S. was considering dispatching additional military resources to the Gulf but that no decisions had been made. The U.S. already has the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier battle group in the area, as well as fighter jets, bombers, reconnaissance aircraft and air defences.<\/p>\n

Trump, alternating between aggressive and nonviolent reactions, said the U.S. could respond \u201cwith an attack many, many times larger\u201d but also \u201cI’m not looking at options right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

American officials released satellite images of the damage at the heart of the kingdom’s crucial Abqaiq oil processing plant and a key oil field, and two U.S. officials said the attackers used multiple cruise missiles and drone aircraft.<\/p>\n

Private experts said the satellite images show the attackers had detailed knowledge of which tanks and machinery to hit within the sprawling Saudi oil processing facility at Abqaiq to cripple production.<\/p>\n

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But \u201csatellite imagery can’t show you where the attack originated from,\u201d said Joe Bermudez, an expert at the Center for Strategic and\u00a0International\u00a0Studies who examined the images.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the photos indicate is that someone planned a sophisticated, co-ordinated attack that really impacted the production of oil at this facility,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The U.S. alleges the pattern of destruction suggested Saturday’s attack did not come from neighbouring Yemen, as claimed by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels there. A Saudi military alleged \u201cIranian weapons\u201d had been used.<\/p>\n

The Saudis invited United Nations and other\u00a0international\u00a0experts to help investigate, suggesting there was no rush to retaliate.<\/p>\n

Jon Alterman, the chief Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and\u00a0International\u00a0Studies, said the Saudi caution reflects the kingdom’s wariness of taking on Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think there’s a great independent Saudi capability to respond,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don’t want to start a war with Iran that you don’t have an idea how you’re going to end.\u201d<\/p>\n

In New York, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, condemned the attack and said that \u201cemerging information indicates that responsibility lies with Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the Pentagon, Defence Secretary Mark Esper suggested Iranian involvement, too. In a series of tweets after meeting with Trump and other senior national security officials, Esper said the administration was working with partner nations \u201cto address this unprecedented attack and defend the\u00a0international\u00a0rules-based order that is being undermined by Iran.<\/p>\n

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\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran rejected the allegations, and a government spokesman said there now is \u201cabsolutely no chance\u201d of a hoped-for meeting between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Trump at the U.N. General Assembly next week.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurrently we don’t see any sign from the Americans which has honesty in it, and if the current state continues there will be absolutely no chance of a meeting between the two presidents,\u201d spokesman Ali Rabiei said.<\/p>\n

Downplaying any talk of imminent U.S. military action, Vice-President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, told reporters at the White House that Trump’s \u201clocked and loaded\u201d was \u201ca broad term that talks about the realities that\u201d the U.S. is \u201csafer and more secure domestically from energy independence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new violence has led to fears that further action on any side could rapidly escalate a confrontation that’s been raging just below the surface in the wider Persian Gulf in recent months. There already have been mysterious attacks on oil tankers that Washington blames on Tehran, at least one suspected Israeli strike on Shiite forces in Iraq, and the downing of a U.S. military surveillance drone by Iran.<\/p>\n

Those tensions have increased ever since Trump pulled the U.S. out of Iran’s 2015 agreement with world powers that curtailed Iranian nuclear activities and the U.S. re-imposed sanctions that sent Iran’s economy into freefall.<\/p>\n

The weekend attack halted production of 5.7 million barrels of crude a day, more than half of Saudi Arabia’s global daily exports and more than 5% of the world’s daily crude oil production.<\/p>\n

The U.S. and\u00a0international\u00a0benchmarks for crude each vaulted more than 14%, comparable to the 14.5% spike in oil on Aug. 6, 1990, following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.<\/p>\n

U.S. stocks were down but only modestly. Major stock indexes in Europe also fell. Markets in Asia finished mixed.<\/p>\n

At a news conference, Saudi military spokesman Col. Turki al-Maliki said, \u201cAll the indications and operational evidence, and the weapons that were used in the terrorist attack, whether in Buqayq or Khurais, indicate with initial evidence that these weapons are Iranian weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russia’s Foreign Ministry, while expressing \u201cgrave concern\u201d about the attack, warned against putting the blame on Iran, saying that plans of military retaliation against Iran would be unacceptable.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

AP Writers Jon Gambrell and Aya Batrawy contributed from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. AP writers Zeke Miller and Michael Biesecker contributed from Washington, Tali Arbel from New York, Elaine Kurtenbach from Bangkok, Nasser Karimi from Tehran, Dave Rising from Berlin, Samy Magdy from Cairo and Qassim Abdul-Zahra from Baghdad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump declared Monday it \u201clooks\u201d like Iran was behind the explosive attack on Saudi Arabian oil …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":231202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-robert-burns","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231200"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280870,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231200\/revisions\/280870"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}