World Affairs Brief, September 20, 2019 Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World. Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com).

US BLAMES IRAN FOR SAUDI REFINERY ATTACK

Even though the Houthis of Yemen took credit for last Saturday’s attack on a major Saudi oil refinery, the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and every major US media outlet were eager to blame Iran, with the pompous Pompeo calling it an “act of war.” But so far the evidence looks thin at best and suspiciously planted at worst. As a former military pilot, my problem with the pictures of the damage is that there is only a single hole in every one of the 14 spherical gas storage tanks in the refinery and none of them exploded. I know of no explosive munitions capable of putting a uniform sized hole, in the exact same location on each the numerous tank without exploding the contents and destroying the tanks themselves—and yet that’s what the pictures purportedly show. President Trump always seems to go along with US intelligence when it cooks up evidence like this against either Syria or Iran. He naively said, “It’s ‘looking like’ Iran was responsible for Saudi oil attacks,” and bragged that the US was “locked and loaded.” Iran disavowed the attack, calling it “maximum lies” and said they were ready to repel any attack. Saudi Arabia compared this attack to its own 9/11, possibly setting the stage to attack Iran. Perhaps the comparison with 9/11 is not so far off. The WTC attacks were a US Deep State false flag event used to start phony wars against Middle Eastern nations.

The problem of small holes in the tanks and no resulting explosions isn’t just a minor anomaly—it is a major contradiction in US claims about Iran being responsible and cries out for an explanation. See for yourself in these US satellite photos first obtained from the government by the Associate Press.

The news all refer to the strikes as having “surgical” precision—14 hits on 14 spherical storage tanks all in the same place. Although they inexplicably didn’t explode, there was a big fire at the refinery. But strangely it was extinguished in just a day. Refinery fires normally burn for days.

Unless the Houthis have some magical weapon that can penetrate tanks full of flammable gas, and not explode, there is no way those tanks were hit with UAVs or missiles. One possibility may be depleted uranium rounds which have no explosives, but only Israel and the US and Russia manufacture depleted Uranium munitions. Even though they are supposed to destroy things by the speed of impact, without explosives, depleted uranium rounds would create heated sparks and shrapnel as they penetrated the tanks.

The US claims the attacks came from the northwest from the direction of Iraq or Iran but have offered no proof in either satellite tracking or radar tapes. A NATO military official recently in Saudi Arabia analyzed that “Those photos only prove that the cruise missiles used that approach on target – they tell us nothing at all about where they originated from… If these came from Iran, the Americans can easily prove it with radar data that they haven’t yet released.” The US hasn’t released that radar data, which they surely would have if it showed them coming from Iran.

And then there’s the issue of why the US supplied Patriot Missile systems or sea based Aegis anti-missile systems didn’t detect and down the drones or cruise missiles? We have naval assets surrounding Iran, and these attack missiles or drones would have had to fly directly over them to get to Saudi Arabia. As Business Insider wrote,

Multiple experts speaking on background characterized the US presence in the area as having three main goals: defending US military bases, keeping the Persian Gulf open to shipping, and defending Saudi oil facilities from attack.

Assets to monitor attacks from Iran are considerable: a band of radars based in Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain are all pointed at Iran to provide early warning. Many US ships are in the area, equipped with the Aegis air-defense system, which has a range of some 300 nautical miles.

US land bases are also protected by similar, albeit shorter-range, systems. Saudi Arabia itself has spent billions on its air force and missile defense, including top-of-the-line US-made Patriot air-defense systems specifically meant to defend against Iran.

So why did not the kingdom’s advanced US-supplied anti air defenses fail to intercept the inbound projectiles and UAVs? And why doesn’t the US supply the radar tapes proving they came from Iran?

A former naval officer who was deployed in the Persian Gulf operating air defense systems told Business Insider that it is unlikely the attack came from across the water in the direction of Iran:

“Oversea shot seems unlikely – Bahrain has a long-range air-surveillance radar,” the former officer said, including the sophisticated AN/TPS-59 radar. “Seems unlikely that something like that would miss some ballistic missiles.” There has been no evidence that US or Saudi radar systems picked up the incoming attack or that either military attempted to intercept the missiles before they struck the facilities.

US Aegis naval assets are stationed there, which could have easily intercepted them. US forces are constantly on alert against Iranian attacks, so how could they miss a massive strike by 20 drones and cruise missiles? Not likely.

Saudi Arabia displayed parts of multiple destroyed UAVs and a broken up ballistic missile, but all the weapons they show don’t explain why the strikes on the tanks did not produce explosions. Even if they have parts of Iranian military equipment it doesn’t mean that they were attacked from Iran directly. Iran supplies missiles to Hezbollah and the Houthis of Yemen. The Saudis have frequently been attacked by Houthi drones, how do we know these pieces weren’t shot down previously? Does the US get blamed for all the missiles it supplies to ISIS or the Saudis or the Syrian rebel terrorists?

The Houthis have claimed responsibility for the attack, and they certainly have every justification for attacking Saudi Arabia. The Saudis, acting as US surrogates, have been killing civilians in Yemen for the past two years after the Houthis overthrew the US-backed puppet regime there that was helping supply US-backed terrorists in Syria. But the Abqaiq refinery wasn’t the only target. On the same night the Houthis struck the Khurais oilfield, causing more fires. There appears to be too many “precision srikes” that night—way more than the Houthis could have been responsible for.

My theory:

The only way I can make sense of the contradictions presented by the evidence and lack of proof about origin is that someone added a false flag attack on to a minor real attack by the Houthis—to make it look more precise and bigger than it really was (and to blame Iran).

When I combine the facts of non-explosive penetration rounds and no radar tapes from either US Naval or Saudi anti-missile squadrons proving where the attack came from, I strongly suspect that this was a false flag attack (probably by Israel) meant to coincide with a Houthi UAV attack that did do some damage. Israel has been attacking Iranian forces in Syria and Lebanon incessantly for the past year and trying to provoke Iran into war. This attack fits Israel’s motives as a puppet for the globalists as well as their capabilities to a T.

The US and Saudis had to have been in on it, to the extent that they had to have advanced knowledge in order to NOT use their anti-aircraft and anti-missile defenses against the incoming strike, and to hide their radar tracking of the incoming targets, which could have easily proven an origin in Iran.

There could be something even more bizarre and secret happening here, but the controlling factor is the issue no one is discussing—that US naval forces would have seen the entire attack path on radar and didn’t stop it, had it come from Iran. If it came from the Houthis, it would have been over land and not detectable from US naval assets, and if from Israel, the US would have reason to cover it up.

Will it lead to War?

I think it will eventually, since the globalists won’t stop until Iran is destroyed, but right now Trump seems reluctant to pull the trigger, saying “I don’t want a war with anyone.” This is what keeps frustrating Trump’s globalist advisors—no matter how much they push the war agenda on Iran and Syria, and provide him with false intelligence, Trump can’t be relied on to do their bidding. He keeps changing his mind, and getting cold feet about war, as he should. Iran is a formidable enemy that is getting stronger every year.

Instead of war, yesterday he called for more sanctions on Iran, as if they could get any worse. President Trump tweeted that he had ordered Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to “substantially increase sanctions” on Iran, amid escalating tensions between the two countries. Pompeo must be grinding his teeth in irritation, and plotting how to put more pressure on Trump to attack. This is the same Pompeo who admitted after his tenure at the CIA that, “We lie, we cheat and we steal” at the agency. That makes him Deep State.

Meanwhile, Iran responded to Pompeo’s continual drumbeat for war by warning Thursday,

…that an “all-out war” could break out if any country attacks it following weekend bombings of Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities that the U.S. believes Tehran orchestrated.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s stark message to CNN comes a day after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted that the “Iranian regime’s threatening behavior will not be tolerated.”

“I am making a very serious statement that we don’t want to engage in a military confrontation,” Zarif said in an interview with the channel. “But we won’t blink to defend our territory.”

As for the consequences for oil supplies in the wake of the attack, prices initially spiked over the fear of dire shortages. Trump told us that the US is OK because we no longer need to import foreign oil. But the US does, in fact, still import oil. The US exports a lot of oil products to the EU—especially diesel and gasoline products, and has to import oil to make up the difference.

While oil prices spiked with the false news that Saudi Oil production (1/5th of world supplies) could be impacted for six months, they quickly came back down on news that Saudi production would be back to normal within a month—attesting to the suspicion that the attack wasn’t really all that bad. The small holes in the gas storage tanks apparently can be repaired in a week.

We haven’t seen the end of this provocation. Everyone in the mainstream media is parroting the “fact” that Iran is to blame. They will keep repeating it, along with all the other arguments about how “Trump can’t let them get away with this,” until he relents.