The situation in the Middle East has been intensifying for weeks. Iran wants war. They need to do something to show that the West is not economically gutting them, though that’s exactly what’s happening. Iran was seizing oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and now they’ve hit an oil field in Saudi Arabia with drone strikes and cruise missiles. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called the attack an act of war (via WSJ):
Hundreds of workers scurried in the stifling summer heat around cranes by a 100-foot-tall processing unit, a vital part of this sprawling oil facility, now charred black and reeking of tar and burned metal following an attack last week.
“We are working 24/7,” Fahad al-Abdulkareem, a general manager at Aramco, the Saudi oil monopoly, said on Friday.
The gnarled equipment and piles of debris was the result of drone-and-missile strikes on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities on Saturday that briefly knocked out half Saudi Arabia’s oil production, sending crude prices soaring. The Khurais oil field, one of the kingdom’s largest, resumed 30% of production within 24 hours of the strikes and will be totally back online by September’s end, Mr. Abdulkareem said.
Saudi Arabia invited reporters to see the damaged oil facilities to show customers Aramco was back in business and to help Washington rally international support against Iran ahead of a meeting next week of world leaders at the United Nations.
Both the kingdom and the U.S. have accused Tehran of orchestrating the strikes on Khurais and on a Saudi crude processing facility that is the world’s largest, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo describing the strikes as an “act of war.”
New sanctions were slapped on Iran, who is a state sponsor of terrorism. For the anti-Trump Left, this would be the best time to undercut our president by smearing him as a madman. Remember when they all thought that he was going to tweet the U.S. into a nuclear war with North Korea? None of that happened. It was nonsensical. Trump has taken rational steps in response because inaction is not an option. Right now, we’re deploying troops to Saudi Arabia, along with defense equipment (via NYT):
President Trump is sending a modest deployment of American troops to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, along with air and missile defense equipment, in response to the attacks on Saudi oil facilities, which the administration blames on Iran.
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, disclosed the decision on Friday evening, with Mr. Esper framing the action as “defensive in nature.” General Dunford said that the precise number of American troops headed to the region has not been determined, but that it would be a “moderate deployment” in the hundreds, not thousands
We’ll keep you posted.