Abqaiq Khurais ARAMCO Oilfield attack, Pompeo blames Iran

[TonyGosling]

Saudi Arabia says oilfield attack came 'from north' and blames Iran
US secretary of state calls the strikes an 'act of war,' but Tehran denies any role in diplomatic note to Washington
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iran-denies-role-saudi-oil-attacks- diplomatic-note-us-report

Saudi Defence Ministry spokesman Colonel Turki al-Malki presenting evidence that the drone and missile attack came from the 'north' (Reuters)
By MEE and agencies
Published date: 18 September 2019 09:29 UTC | Last update: 15 hours 33 min ago

Saudi Arabia said on Wednesday there was "unquestionable evidence" that last Saturday's attack on Saudi oil facilities was sponsored by Iran and was launched from the north of the country.

Speaking on Wednesday, Saudi Defence Ministry spokesperson Colonel Turki al-Malki said that Iranian drone technology was used alongside cruise missiles in the attack targeting Abqaiq and Khurais, two key Aramco facilities in eastern Saudi Arabia.

"The attack was launched from the north and unquestionably sponsored by Iran," Malki told a news conference in Riyadh, without offering any further details.

US officials also continued to blame Iran for the incident.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is currently in Jeddah for talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, called the attack an "act of war" on Wednesday, AFP reported.

Pompeo is also due to travel to Abu Dhabi for talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates.

Yemen's Houthi rebels initially claimed responsibility for the attack, but Yemen lies to the south of Saudi Arabia.

US officials have suggested that the attack came from Iran itself, while Iraqi intelligence sources have told Middle East Eye that it was launched from southern Iraq.

The Saudi spokesperson showed journalists on Wednesday debris of a suspected Iranian drone used to attack the oilfields.

The Saudi statement came as Iran continued to deny any involvement and the country's leaders again suggested that the Houthis were behind the attacks.

Tehran sends diplomatic note
In a diplomatic note sent to the United States on Wednesday, Tehran "emphasised that Iran has not played any role in this attack and denies and condemns" US claims to the contrary, Iranian state media reported.

The ISNA news agency said the note had been delivered via the Swiss embassy in Tehran.

The note also threatened an "immediate reaction" to any military attack and said that retaliation would not be “limited to its source”.


Trump and the Saudis sowed chaos. Iran is giving it back
Read More »
The attacks have paralysed the Saudi oil industry, causing oil production to drop by half and stoked already heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington following US President Donald Trump's withdrawal from an international deal under which Iran curtailed its nuclear activity.

Bin Salman said on Wednesday that the attacks were a "real test" of global will, while urging the international community to take a "firm stance", state media reported.

US Vice President Mike Pence said on Tuesday that the US was "'locked and loaded and we're ready to defend the interests of our allies in the region".

But he said Washington was still "evaluating the evidence".

"We're consulting with our allies, and the president will determine the best course of action in the days ahead," Pence said.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday once again attributed the attacks to the Houthis, which Tehran has supported in its war against a Saudi-led coalition and Yemen's exiled government, describing it as a "warning".

"The Yemenis... haven't hit a hospital, they haven't hit a school, they haven't hit Sanaa bazaar. They just hit an industrial centre... to warn you," Rouhani said after a cabinet meeting.

"Learn lessons from this warning and consider that there could be a war in the region."

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also linked the attacks to the war in Yemen, writing on Twitter: "US is in denial if it thinks that Yemeni victims of 4.5 yrs of the worst war crimes wouldn't do all to strike back."


Javad Zarif
✔
@JZarif
US is in denial if it thinks that Yemeni victims of 4.5 yrs of the worst war crimes wouldn't do all to strike back.

Perhaps it's embarrassed that $100s of blns of its arms didn't intercept Yemeni fire.

But blaming Iran won't change that.

Ending the war=only solution for all.

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Rouhani and Zarif are due to travel to New York for next week's United Nations General Assembly, but officials told state media on Wednesday that the trip would likely be cancelled if the US did not issue the pair with visas within the next few hours.

[TonyGosling]

Saudi oil facility attacks: Race on to restore supplies
By Frank Gardner
BBC security correspondent, Saudi Arabia
2 hours ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-49775849

A week on, it's still not known who launched the attack on two Saudi oil facilities and from which direction, but the damage is plain to see. Saudi Arabia and the US blame Iran for what appears to have been an attack by 18 drones and seven cruise missiles. Iran denies any involvement but Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi rebels have claimed the attack.

What is clear is that the damage caused is significant. Oil prices saw their biggest jump in 30 years on Monday, rising by nearly 15%. Despite this, Saudi Arabia says oil production will resume as normal by the end of September.

The BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner was among journalists allowed into the Khurais oil facility and the processing plant at Abqaiq to view the aftermath.

Workers in white overalls, yellow hi-vis jackets and hard hats are still racing to restore the Khurais plant to full capacity after 5.7 million barrels a day were knocked out by the attack on 14 September.

A crane arches up into the air, poised to remove more debris, while small slicks of oil are spread across the concrete apron floor.

Twisted, buckled and blackened by fire, the heavily damaged separation tower at Khurais oilfield stands testimony to one of the most devastating attacks on a country's critical infrastructure in modern times.

Image caption
Structures at Khurais bear the signs of the damage inflicted in last Saturday's drone attack (photo: Frank Gardner)
The structure is just one of 19 targets hit by a wave of incoming missiles and explosive-laden drones in the early hours of last Saturday morning.

Both Saudi Arabia and the US have blamed the attack squarely on Iran, which denies it and which had threatened retaliation if it were to suffer a punitive strike.

Saudi Arabia oil attacks: Timeline
14 Sept - Two of Saudi Arabia's major oil facilities, Aramco's Abqaiq and Khurais, are set ablaze. The Iran-aligned Houthi rebel group says it deployed 10 drones in the attacks. Oil production is cut by 5.7m barrels a day
15 Sept - US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blames the attacks on Iran. Iran accuses the US of "deceit".
16 Sept - Oil prices increase by 15% by the end of the day
17 Sept - Saudi Arabia says its oil output will return to normal by the end of September, with half the production already restored. Oil price falls again
18 Sept -Saudi Arabia shows off wreckage of weapons which it says proves Iranian involvement
Whoever chose these targets knew exactly what they were doing and programmed the GPS co-ordinates with pinpoint precision.

It was plain to see where the projectiles had hit the separation towers (where the oil and gas are separated out), the large spheroid containers that drain off the water, and various other pieces of steel superstructure, all essential for stabilising the crude oil ready for export.

Processing Saudi Arabia's natural resource and dispatching it to overseas markets in Europe and Asia is the lifeblood of the Saudi economy. So, billions of dollars have been spent over the decades in providing this country with state-of-the-art defences.

And yet those defences were easily penetrated by these relatively cheap weapons. It's still not clear exactly who fired them and from where.

Oil prices soar after attacks on Saudi facilities
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When al-Qaeda tried to send an explosive-laden truck into the oil complex at Abqaiq in 2006, it was immediately stopped at the perimeter. But this attack was of a totally different magnitude.

It took the Saudis - and their US allies - completely by surprise, penetrating the security cordon and temporarily knocking out roughly half Saudi Arabia's processing capacity, sending global oil markets reeling.

Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company, says full capacity should be restored by the end of September. But unspoken here is the fear that such an attack could yet be repeated.

[outsider]

'Saudi Arabia - Another Defeat In Yemen - King's Bodyguard Killed':
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52304.htm
'...For the second time in a month the Yemeni forces aligned with the Houthi surrounded and captured brigade size forces of Saudi soldiers and mercenaries. The Houthi media report that 2,400 fighters and several hundred vehicles were capture. The reports say that 500 Saudi soldiers were killed. This video shows the fighting. Another video shows several hundred prisoners being led away from the front. Here are additional pictures. Most the prisoners seem to be poor men that the Saudis had hired. Only a few have complete uniforms. The events happened north of Kitaf near the Saudi Yemeni border and at least partially in the Najran region within Saudi Arabia. Here is a report of the previous operation. Overnight some ten short range ballistic missiles were launched from Yemen against the airport of Al Jadhea in Saudi Arabia...'.

'Just How Swampy Are U.S-Saudi Arms Deals?':
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52309.htm?
'...Such realities have found little place in the outpouring of commentary on the attacks, with little or no attention paid to easily available evidence. For example, published pictures of the damage at Abqaiq clearly show a number of liquified natural gas storage tanks pierced in the same place on their western sides. As former Pentagon analyst Pierre Sprey pointed out to me, this clearly shows that the attacks came from the west, not the north, as claimed in numerous media reports.

The consistent accuracy demonstrated by these impact holes indicates that the terminal guidance was not GPS, but rather human drone controllers, manually steering the slow flying drones, via the drones’ video cameras, into the target. For control purposes they would have to have been in line of sight to the drones (the only alternative would be an easily detectable satellite link) so they could have been no further than 36 miles away at most, assuming the drones were flying at a likely 300 feet altitude...'

But ultimately, as any one who knows anything about drones and cruise missiles, they can manouver all around the target, and come in to attack it from any angle (like the Pentagon 'Boeing'!).
There is no way military, intelligence and war correspondents would not be perfectly aware of that fact. Just like the shipping 'attacks' (in that case almost certainly 'False Flag' attacks) they blamed Iran with no proof, and indeed against the logic of the situation, just like they blamed Assad for the head-choppers and their PR outfit, the 'White Helmets' False Flag CW attacks and hoaxes.