Saudi Arabia has ramped up the pressure on Donald Trump to respond to a devastating strike on two major oil installations, by displaying drone and missile technology it insisted showed the attack was “unquestionably sponsored by Iran”. A Saudi defense spokesman at a high-profile press conference claimed that a total of 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. Lt Col Turki al-Maliki said Saudi Arabia was still working to identify the precise launch point of the attack but claimed the debris and data technology was of Iranian origin and promised to share all the evidence with the UN and Saudi’s allies.
He also repeatedly asserted it was the responsibility of the whole international community to respond, saying: “Iran’s continued aggression and continued support for militia groups harms us all … We call the international community to hold Iran responsible; all its actions show and portray its aggression.” He said Saudi Arabia had intercepted a total of 282 ballistic missiles and 258 UAVs or drones, the bulk of which would have come from Yemen. He added: “The cruise missiles used were of advanced capability, we have the date of the manufacture which is 2019 – Iran’s IRGC has this type of weaponry – all the evidence that we have gathered from the site proves that Iran’s weaponry was used in the attack.”
The cruise missile could not reach the oil facilities if they had been fired from Yemen, he said. “The use of cruise missiles is beyond the capabilities of the Iran proxy in Yemen,” he explained. But despite the impressive display of fallen ordnance, the Saudis have clearly not yet been unable to make an unanswerable case that Iran was directly involved. At one point he said the missiles may have come from Yemen’s Houthi rebels, as Iran and the Houthis themselves assert. The show of weaponry came as the Saudi deputy defense minister, Khalid bin Salman, lavished praise on the US administration for confronting “the Iranian regime’s and terrorist organizations’ aggression in an unprecedented way” – adding that “we in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia thank the [US] president for his stance, we will continue to stand with the USA against the forces of evil and senseless aggression”.
It is unlikely a further package of already heavily deployed sanctions will be the limit of the US response to the attack on Saudi Arabia, and a range of military responses are being proposed to the president, prompting a formal written warning to the US from Tehran that any US attack would lead to a broader Iranian military retaliation. Trump is aware he needs to build a coalition of domestic and foreign political support for a strike on Iran, and that requires providing evidence that the attack was mounted, or coordinated by Iran, and not by Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Houthis staged their own press conference in which army spokesman Brig Gen Yahya Serie tried to substantiate their claim of responsibility for the attack.
He said the weapons that targeted Aramco were Qasif K-2 cruise missiles and Samad 3 drones possessing a range of 1,700km (1,050 miles) and were launched from three sites and timed to reach their targets from different angles simultaneously. The destruction was far worse than the Saudi imagery showed, he said. Versions of these weapons were displayed by the Houthis at a small arms exhibition on 7 July, but their true capability is unknown. Earlier, the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, described the US claims that Tehran was involved in the attack on Saudi Arabian petroleum facilities as slanderous and simply part of Washington’s continuing campaign to isolate and put pressure on Iran. In a defiant video address, Rouhani continued to insist the attack had been mounted by Houthi rebels in Yemen and blamed Saudi Arabia for starting the four-year war there.
