Saudi Arabia wants its allies to believe Tehran launched attacks on its oil facilities, even though the one thing their evidence proves is the Iranian-made arms. Even so, Donald Trump will unlikely greenlight a war against Iran.
The possibility that Iranian-made missiles were used in the attack on the Saudi oil plants isn’t a huge revelation, Viktor Murakhovsky, military analyst and editor-in-chief of Arsenal of the Fatherland magazine, told RT.
Showcasing the wreckage from the missiles and drones that struck Abqaiq and Khurais facilities might have proven this point, but those were identified as soon as first photos of the debris emerged in wake of the strikes. Iran has developed such “long-range cruise missiles” on the basis of Soviet Kh-55 missile, which it bought from Ukraine in early 2000s, Murakhovsky said.
But it doesn’t prove in any way that Tehran had anything to do with the attack and that the strikes [on Saudi petrol plants] originated from the Iranian territory.
Despite the attack being claimed by the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Riyadh on Wednesday insisted that it couldn’t have been launched from Yemeni territory and was “unquestionably sponsored by Iran.” One of the arguments made was that the Houthis were not capable of carrying out such an attack. Murakhovsky disputes this.
“There’s no secret that Iran supplies weaponry and military hardware to the Houthis in Yemen and cruise missiles could’ve well been among those deliveries,” he said. If so, such missiles are “not difficult” to operate and the Houthi forces didn’t need any help from Iranian specialists to carry out the attack on their own, the military expert said.
What the Saudi report basicaly says is that “the weaponry could’ve been supplied, and probably was, by Iran in exactly the same way that [the UK] and others have suppled arms to Saudi Arabia, which had been used in this four-year war against Yemen,” Matthew Gordon-Banks, former British MP and senior research fellow at the UK Defense Academy, told RT.
But by coming up with accusations against their main geopolitical rivals in Tehran, Riyadh “tends to expect the US to do its dirty work for them” – meaning a retaliatory strike on Iran.
However, they are unlikely to achieve their goal as US President Donald Trump knows that “no matter what his advisors may say, a strike against Iran could have devastating consequences throughout the Gulf and internationally.”