On Sunday, unnamed US officials claimed the Yemen-based Houthis do not possess the munitions used in Saturday’s attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure.
Just to pull some random quotes, Reuters cited an unidentified US source as saying there were “19 points of impact and that evidence showed the launch area was west-northwest of the targets — not south from Yemen”, while Bloomberg referenced comments from “a third administration official… who said precision-guided munitions had been used”.
The administration was clearly trying to justify Mike Pompeo’s Saturday tweet, in which Trump’s top diplomat (a notorious Iran hawk) unequivocally blamed Tehran and said there was “no evidence” to suggest the attacks originated in Yemen.
Fast forward to Monday and the Saudis have now said their “preliminary” investigation shows Iranian weapons were used in the strikes.
Specifically, Turki al-Maliki, a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, said an analysis of “debris and wreckage” indicates “it belongs to the Iranian regime”. Of course, there’s a very sense in which a lot of the Houthis’ weaponry “belongs to the Iranian regime”, so it’s not entirely clear this disproves the group’s claims of responsibility, even if you assume the Saudis are telling the truth.
“The investigation is continuing and all indications are that weapons used in both attacks came from Iran”, al-Maliki told reporters in Riyadh, adding that the Saudis are now probing “where they were fired from”.
“We are working right now to spot the launch point”, he went on to say, before suggesting the Saudis will release the evidence when they’re good and ready. He didn’t give a time table.
Meanwhile, Tehran continues to insist they weren’t involved – well, other than backing the Houthis, of course.
“Accusing Iran of the attacks is in line with the US’s maximum-lies policy”, foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi charged. “Such accusations are unsurprising, unacceptable and baseless”.
Trump, who, by his own account, was “locked and loaded” on Sunday night, delivered some cryptic comments on Twitter.
“Remember when Iran shot down a drone, saying knowingly that it was in their airspace when, in fact, it was nowhere close”, Trump asked, of his 64 million followers. “They stuck strongly to that story knowing that it was a very big lie”, he continued. “Now they say that they had nothing to do with the attack on Saudi Arabia. We’ll see?”
Yes, we will. Or maybe we won’t. Who knows.
Read more: World In Shock As Reality Of Saudi Oil Attacks Sinks In
US weapons used by Saudi on Yemen civilians.
Indeed.
US weapons used literally everywhere else by everyone else to attack ….well just use the alphabet for victims list…..
After releasing photos to prove that the munitions came from the WNW, and now saying they did not come from Iraq, how in the world are they going to spin this now to them coming from Iran in the North and East?
If you look at the “map” with the N-compass point, it’s not that tuff to see that the flight path came from the West (IMHO) sure the launch could have come from anywhere. Additionally, not that it matters, but the wingspan of some drones is Yuge: “un 20, 2019 – President Trump suggested Iran’s downing of a U.S. military drone was … a wingspan of about 130 feet–slightly wider than a Boeing 737 jet.” Hence, where’s all the parts and pieces around the strike area?
To be more specific, if one looks at the image released yesterday, which shows holes punched into the facility tanks, the impact areas are all in a precise exact spots on each dome and if one can believe the compass point on that map, the flight path, before impact was from West, South-West. In Photoshop it’s easy to rotate the image to get a true North bearing. If one wanted to expand strategic fantasy, a surprise attack from that direction would have been more difficult to protect, but as mentioned above, some drones are very large and launching a large attack would require a great deal of sophisticated logistical support — what ever that means. Interesting that oil prices and equity markets are somewhat stable, more so than when The Boneheads are attacked by tweet? Hmmm..
Well they can prove to the world using a fat ass idiot as president and a big drawing on a sheet of paper that Alabama is going to get hit hard by a category five hurricane, even if the national weather service says no. See he said and someone had drawn a hurricane path on a map, and people said yes he has a point. They can prove beyond doubt that trumpolini’s inaugural crowd was bigger than Obama, how could that be you might ask, i was there it wasn’t so, another one might interject, well they have photographic evidence my inquiring friend that shows just that, a big crowd with the sun shining down on trump, ooooh you say, it was raining, not so, the photographic evidence clearly shows the sun shining from the north right in trump’s orange halo. They can prove to the world that trump’s fingers are long and not short as previously seen by people. They can prove that global warming is a myth perpetrated by the Chinese using American scientists and Belgians, in order so the Chinese can replace the white race. They have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jim Acosta or whatever his name is beat up a white house staffer using his microphone, his microphoooone. There is video evidence circulating on youtube showing just that.
Faking something so far away and exotic, so removed from the minds of daily americans too busy pushing overloaded trolleys up and down Walmart, is child’s play by now. What’s that? The gulf of Tonkin you say, WMDs in Iraq…oh please, we are so past that by now.
The symmetry of the impact markers makes me wonder how fabulous the accuracy of said weapons was.. A little to uniform to be credible.
I see Pompeo is calling it an attack on the worlds oil supply, instead of against Saudi Arabia, in order to justify an american response on behalf of the “world”. The Yemen conflict is essentially a civil war being used as a proxy war between the Sunni Saudi Arabia (probable backers of Al Quaeda) and Shia Iran. The USA has no justification to be involved other than Trumps determination to “win” in his anti Iran policy, which seems to be based soley on his determination to trash Obama’s part in the Iran nuclear deal.
Absolutely infuriating that Trump and his sychophants are all in with the people who attacked us on 9/11.