JUAN COLE: US Manipulatively blames Iran as Saudi Arabia loses 58% of Oil Production to Houthi Attack
Yemen’s Zaydi Shiite
Houthi rebels, who control the northwest of Yemen, including the capital of
Sana’a, claimed
on Saturday to have launched the 10 drones that struck the major Saudi
petroleum production and refining installations at Abqaiq and Khurais.Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo denied that the drones came from Yemen, blaming the attack on Iran
instead. Iran provides some minor aid to the Houthis, but the latter lack
control of a port or secure overland routes out of the country and so Iran
couldn’t possibly have given that much help. The Houthis are an indigenous
Yemeni movement with Yemeni discontents with Saudi Arabia.
Attack on Saudi oil field a game-changer in Gulf confrontation: The attack on the
world's largest oil processing plant early Saturday morning is
a dramatic escalation in the confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia
-- even if the Iranians didn't fire the drones.. Several projectiles struck the Abiqaiq plant, starting a
series of fires that quickly took out nearly half Saudi's oil production - 5%
of the global daily output -- and sparking fears about the security of the
world's oil supplies. It's unclear when Abiqaiq, which is operated by Saudi
giant Aramco, will be fully operational again.
Pompeo’s impetuous
tweet, like the ones coming from his president, was itself not accompanied by
any evidence and configured a local conflict as major geopolitical one. Pompeo
has long looked for a pretext to overthrow the Iranian government and to make
war on Iran. What Pompeo won’t tell
you is that current Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman had launched a
brutal air war on Yemen in 2015 in hopes of dislodging the Houthis, not because
of any alleged Iranian connection but because Saudi Arabia had been used to
having major influence on Yemen through dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh and had
lost control when Saleh was overthrown by the 2011-2012 youth revolution.
The Saudis, the United
Arab Emirates and other allies have for nearly four and a half years
intensively bombed Sana’a and other civilian towns and cities in north Yemen.
About a third of the airstrikes have hit civilian structures, including
apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, ports and bridges. Some 10 million
Yemenis out of 28 million are food insecure as a result of the war, with
cholera and other debilitating diseases rampant, and some estimates for the
death toll from direct military action on all sides run to 80,000.
The Houthis do
not have an air force.. But
somehow they have acquired drones... Drones don’t set off
anti-aircraft systems because they are too small to detect. The US Congress had
called on the US to stop supporting the Saudi war on Yemen, but Pompeo insisted
on it continuing and Trump vetoed the resolution. Pompeo himself
therefore bears some of the blame for the Abqaiq attack, which is a Houthi
counter-attack, replying to years of intensive Saudi bombing of Yemen (one of
poorest and weakest countries in the world)... read more:
