Washington: Pentagon officials are pressing the Trump administration for a restrained response to the weekend attacks on Saudi oil facilities, arguing against a potentially costly conflict with Iran, which the US has blamed for the strike.
US Defence Secretary Mark Esper met with President Donald Trump and key national security officials at the White House on Monday, US time, two days after a series of explosions crippled two oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, disrupting more than half the Sunni kingdom’s oil supply and dramatically escalating tensions with its chief rival, Shiite power Iran.
While Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for the attacks, Trump administration officials have said they believe that at least the bulk of the strikes, which targeted two facilities belonging to state-run Saudi oil firm Aramco, were launched from within Iran – an allegation that, if true, would represent a major escalation between the Middle East’s leading regional powers.
In a tweet, Esper, who took over at the Pentagon in the midst of a previous confrontation with Iran in June, said the US military and other government agencies were “working with our partners to address this unprecedented attack and defend the international rules-based order that is being undermined by Iran.”
Read the article by Missy Ryan and Dan Lamothe in The Sydney Morning Herald.