Iran issues ‘battlefield’ warning as US to deploy troops to Gulf
Houthis pledge to halt attacks • Saudi reveals extent of damage to oil sites
TEHRAN/WASHINGTON: Any country that attacks Iran will become the “main battlefield”, the Revolutionary Guards warned yesterday after Washington ordered reinforcements to the Gulf following attacks on Saudi oil installations it blames on Tehran. Tensions escalated between arch-foes Iran and the United States after last weekend’s attacks on Saudi energy giant Aramco’s Abqaiq processing plant and Khurais oilfield halved the kingdom’s oil output.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for the strikes but the US says it has concluded the attacks involved cruise missiles from Iran and amounted to “an act of war”. Washington approved the deployment of troops to Saudi Arabia at “the kingdom’s request”, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said, noting the forces would be “defensive in nature” and focused on air and missile defense.
But Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Major General Hossein Salami said Iran was “ready for any type of scenario”. “Whoever wants their land to become the main battlefield, go ahead,” he told a news conference in Tehran. “We will never allow any war to encroach upon Iran’s territory. We hope that they don’t make a strategic mistake”, he said, listing past US military “adventures” against Iran.
In Riyadh, the Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, Adel Al-Jubeir, warned of “appropriate measures” once the source of the strikes on its oil facilities was confirmed. “We have asked the United Nations to do an investigation and there are also other countries involved in the probe,” he told a press conference. “We are sure the attack was not launched from Yemen, but from the north. When it (the probe) is completed, we will take the appropriate procedures to deal with this aggression,” said Jubeir, without specifying.
Iran’s Salami, for his part, was speaking at Tehran’s Islamic Revolution and Holy Defense museum during the unveiling of an exhibition of what Iran says are US and other drones captured in its territory. It featured a badly damaged drone with US military markings said to be an
RQ-4 Global Hawk that Iran downed in June, as well as an RQ-170 Sentinel captured in 2011 and still intact.
The Guards also displayed the domestically manufactured Khordad 3 air defense battery they say was used to shoot down the Global Hawk. “What are your drones doing in our airspace? We will shoot them down, shoot anything that encroaches on our airspace,” said Salami. His remarks came only days after the strikes on Saudi oil facilities claimed by Yemen’s Houthis, but the US says it has concluded the attack involved cruise missiles from Iran and amounted to “an act of war”.
Saudi Arabia, which has been bogged down in a fiveyear war across its southern border in Yemen, has said Iran “unquestionably sponsored” the attacks. The kingdom says the weapons used in the attacks were Iranianmade, but it has stopped short of directly blaming its regional rival. “Sometimes they talk of military options,” Salami said, apparently referring to the Americans. Yet he warned that “a limited aggression will not remain limited” as Iran was determined to respond and would “not rest until the aggressor’s collapse”.
The Guards’ aerospace commander said the US ought to learn from its past failures and abandon its hostile rhetoric. “We’ve stood tall for the past 40 years and if the enemy makes a mistake, it will certainly receive a crushing response,” Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh said.
Late Friday, the Houthis unexpectedly announced that they planned to halt all attacks on Saudi Arabia as part of a peace initiative to end their country’s devastating conflict, five years after they captured the capital Sanaa. Mehdi Al-Mashat, head of the Houthis’ supreme political council, announced in a speech marking the 2014 rebel seizure of Sanaa “the halt of all attacks against the territory of Saudi Arabia”. He added that he hoped “the gesture would be answered by a stronger gesture” from the Saudis, according to the rebels’ AlMasirah television channel. “Pursuing war is not in anyone’s interest.”
Mashat said the Houthis’ peace initiative was aimed at “bringing about peace through serious negotiations to achieve a comprehensive national reconciliation which does not exclude anyone”. A major goal was to “preserve the blood of Yemenis and achieve a general amnesty”, he added. The plan calls for rebels to “stop all attacks on Saudi territory by drones, ballistic missiles and other means”, he said. He also called for the reopening of Sanaa’s international airport and open access to Yemen’s Red Sea port of Hodeida, a crucial entry point for imports and humanitarian aid.
Jubeir yesterday took a skeptical position to the announcement from Mashat. “We judge other parties by their deeds, actions and not by their words, so we will see (whether) they actually do this or not,” said the Saudi minister. “And regarding what prompted them to do this... we have to do more intensive studies,” he said at a press conference in Riyadh. At a ceremony in Yemen’s capital Sanaa yesterday marking the anniversary of the 2014 rebel seizure of the city, the Houthis again urged Saudi Arabia to take up the offer. Mohammed Ali Al-Houthi, head of the rebels’ Higher Revolutionary Committee and an influential political figure, warned against rejecting the proposal. “If they refuse the initiative we will do them more harm,” he said, adding that “any escalation will be countered by further escalation”.
The United States upped the ante on Friday by announcing new sanctions against Iran’s central bank, with President Donald Trump calling the measures the toughest America has ever imposed on another country. Washington has imposed a series of sanctions against Tehran since unilaterally pulling out of a landmark 2015 nuclear deal in May last year. It already maintains sweeping sanctions on Iran’s central bank, but the US Treasury said Friday’s designation was over the regulator’s work in funding “terrorism”.
Also yesterday, Iran denied its oil infrastructure had been successfully attacked by a cyber operation, after reports of disruptions to the sector online. “Contrary to Western media claims, investigations done today show no successful cyber attack was made on the country’s oil installations and other crucial infrastructure,” the government’s cyber security office said. The statement did not specify which reports it was addressing.
On Friday, Saudi Arabia revealed extensive damage to key oil facilities following weekend aerial strikes that were blamed on Iran, but vowed to quickly restore full production even as regional tensions soar. Abqaiq was struck 18 times while nearby Khurais was hit four times in a raid that triggered multiple explosions and towering flames that took hours to extinguish, Aramco officials said. “Many critical areas of the (Abqaiq) plant were hit,” an Aramco official said, pointing out the strikes had a high degree of precision.
A towering stabilization column, normally silver, had been charred black with a gaping hole blown in the shaft’s base. A separator plant also appeared ravaged in the raids and was surrounded by scaffolding and whitehelmeted workers. “There are 112 shift workers here in normal times. Now 6,000 workers are involved in restoration work,” said Aramco official Khaled AlGhamdi, pointing at damaged infrastructure. Aramco said it was shipping technical equipment from the US and Europe to speed up repairs.
Aramco flew dozens of international journalists to the two sites to show it was speeding up repairs, giving rare access to the nerve center of the world’s largest oil producer as it seeks to shore up investor confidence ahead of a planned initial public offering (IPO). “We will have production at the same level as before the strike by the end of this month - we are coming back stronger,” asserted Fahad Al-Abdulkareem, an Aramco general manager, during the visit to Khurais.
Badly warped thick metal piping - peppered with shrapnel during the aerial strikes - lay strewn around the area of the Khurais attack. But Abdulkareem said that 30 percent of the Khurais plant was operational within 24 hours of the initial strikes. Industry analyst Alex Schindelar, president of the Energy Intelligence group, said that restoring sustainable production capacity to 11 million barrels per day by the end of the month is an “ambitious target, given the amount of repairs required”.