TEHRAN/WASHINGTON:Any country that attacks Iran will become the "main battlefield", theRevolutionary Guards warned yesterday after Washington ordered reinforcementsto the Gulf following attacks on Saudi oil installations it blames on Tehran.Tensions escalated between arch-foes Iran and the United States after lastweekend's attacks on Saudi energy giant Aramco's Abqaiq processing plant andKhurais oilfield halved the kingdom's oil output.
Yemen's Houthirebels have claimed responsibility for the strikes but the US says it hasconcluded the attacks involved cruise missiles from Iran and amounted to"an act of war". Washington approved the deployment of troops toSaudi Arabia at "the kingdom's request", Defense Secretary Mark Espersaid, noting the forces would be "defensive in nature" and focused onair and missile defense.
But IslamicRevolutionary Guard Corps commander Major General Hossein Salami said Iran was"ready for any type of scenario". "Whoever wants their land tobecome the main battlefield, go ahead," he told a news conference inTehran. "We will never allow any war to encroach upon Iran's territory. Wehope that they don't make a strategic mistake", he said, listing past USmilitary "adventures" against Iran.
In Riyadh, theSaudi minister of state for foreign affairs, Adel Al-Jubeir, warned of"appropriate measures" once the source of the strikes on its oilfacilities was confirmed. "We have asked the United Nations to do aninvestigation and there are also other countries involved in the probe,"he told a press conference. "We are sure the attack was not launched fromYemen, but from the north. When it (the probe) is completed, we will take theappropriate procedures to deal with this aggression," said Jubeir, withoutspecifying.
Iran's Salami,for his part, was speaking at Tehran's Islamic Revolution and Holy Defensemuseum during the unveiling of an exhibition of what Iran says are US and otherdrones captured in its territory. It featured a badly damaged drone with USmilitary markings said to be an RQ-4 Global Hawk that Iran downed in June, aswell as an RQ-170 Sentinel captured in 2011 and still intact.
The Guards alsodisplayed the domestically manufactured Khordad 3 air defense battery they saywas used to shoot down the Global Hawk. "What are your drones doing in ourairspace? We will shoot them down, shoot anything that encroaches on ourairspace," said Salami. His remarks came only days after the strikes onSaudi oil facilities claimed by Yemen's Houthis, but the US says it hasconcluded the attack involved cruise missiles from Iran and amounted to"an act of war".
Saudi Arabia,which has been bogged down in a five-year war across its southern border in Yemen,has said Iran "unquestionably sponsored" the attacks. The kingdomsays the weapons used in the attacks were Iranian-made, but it has stoppedshort of directly blaming its regional rival. "Sometimes they talk ofmilitary options," Salami said, apparently referring to the Americans. Yethe warned that "a limited aggression will not remain limited" as Iranwas determined to respond and would "not rest until the aggressor'scollapse".
The Guards'aerospace commander said the US ought to learn from its past failures andabandon its hostile rhetoric. "We've stood tall for the past 40 years andif the enemy makes a mistake, it will certainly receive a crushingresponse," Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh said.
Late Friday, theHouthis unexpectedly announced that they planned to halt all attacks on SaudiArabia as part of a peace initiative to end their country's devastatingconflict, five years after they captured the capital Sanaa. Mehdi Al-Mashat,head of the Houthis' supreme political council, announced in a speech markingthe 2014 rebel seizure of Sanaa "the halt of all attacks against theterritory of Saudi Arabia". He added that he hoped "the gesture wouldbe answered by a stronger gesture" from the Saudis, according to the rebels'Al-Masirah television channel. "Pursuing war is not in anyone'sinterest."
Mashat said theHouthis' peace initiative was aimed at "bringing about peace throughserious negotiations to achieve a comprehensive national reconciliation whichdoes not exclude anyone". A major goal was to "preserve the blood ofYemenis and achieve a general amnesty", he added. The plan calls forrebels to "stop all attacks on Saudi territory by drones, ballisticmissiles and other means", he said. He also called for the reopening ofSanaa's international airport and open access to Yemen's Red Sea port ofHodeida, a crucial entry point for imports and humanitarian aid.
Jubeir yesterdaytook a skeptical position to the announcement from Mashat. "We judge otherparties 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 moreintensive studies," he said at a press conference in Riyadh.
At a ceremony inYemen's capital Sanaa yesterday marking the anniversary of the 2014 rebelseizure 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 andan 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 Statesupped the ante on Friday by announcing new sanctions against Iran's centralbank, with President Donald Trump calling the measures the toughest America hasever imposed on another country. Washington has imposed a series of sanctionsagainst Tehran since unilaterally pulling out of a landmark 2015 nuclear dealin May last year. It already maintains sweeping sanctions on Iran's centralbank, but the US Treasury said Friday's designation was over the regulator'swork in funding "terrorism".
Also yesterday,Iran denied its oil infrastructure had been successfully attacked by a cyberoperation, after reports of disruptions to the sector online. "Contrary toWestern media claims, investigations done today show no successful cyber attackwas made on the country's oil installations and other crucial infrastructure,"the government's cyber security office said. The statement did not specifywhich reports it was addressing.
On Friday, SaudiArabia revealed extensive damage to key oil facilities following weekend aerialstrikes that were blamed on Iran, but vowed to quickly restore full productioneven as regional tensions soar. Abqaiq was struck 18 times while nearby Khuraiswas hit four times in a raid that triggered multiple explosions and toweringflames that took hours to extinguish, Aramco officials said. "Manycritical areas of the (Abqaiq) plant were hit," an Aramco official said,pointing out the strikes had a high degree of precision.
A toweringstabilization column, normally silver, had been charred black with a gapinghole blown in the shaft's base. A separator plant also appeared ravaged in theraids and was surrounded by scaffolding and white-helmeted workers. "Thereare 112 shift workers here in normal times. Now 6,000 workers are involved inrestoration work," said Aramco official Khaled Al-Ghamdi, pointing atdamaged infrastructure. Aramco said it was shipping technical equipment fromthe US and Europe to speed up repairs.
Aramco flewdozens of international journalists to the two sites to show it was speeding uprepairs, giving rare access to the nerve center of the world's largest oilproducer as it seeks to shore up investor confidence ahead of a planned initialpublic offering (IPO). "We will have production at the same level asbefore the strike by the end of this month - we are coming back stronger,"asserted Fahad Al-Abdulkareem, an Aramco general manager, during the visit toKhurais.
Badly warpedthick metal piping - peppered with shrapnel during the aerial strikes - laystrewn around the area of the Khurais attack. But Abdulkareem said that 30percent of the Khurais plant was operational within 24 hours of the initialstrikes. Industry analyst Alex Schindelar, president of the Energy Intelligencegroup, said that restoring sustainable production capacity to 11 millionbarrels per day by the end of the month is an "ambitious target, given theamount of repairs required". - Agencies