Last weekend’s attack on the Saudi Aramco facility is an odd duck when it comes to events of this kind. There are several basic questions that have yet to be answered.
–1.) What has the attack have to do with the United States? No Americans or American property were lost, or even injured. It seems, based on media reporting, that Saudi Arabia was attacked by Iran, though the White House and the Pentagon have not confirmed that this media reporting is correct. Again, whether it was Iran, another country, or a terrorist group, the attack was not an attack, let alone an act of war, against the United States. At this point in time, the correct action for the United States to take is none. That may change, but right now the republic has no genuine national security interest at risk, thanks in large measure to the Trump administration and the energy independence it promoted and helped to secured.
–2.) Each branch of U.S. military has a widespread presence in Saudi Arabia, the Arabian Peninsula’s other Arab tyrannies, as well as afloat in the Persian Gulf and the northwest Indian Ocean. Surely, parts of all of these forces – as well as multiple U.S. military satellites — are bore-sighted on Iranian military activity and the threat it poses to the Arab Peninsula, as well as the U.S. personnel and interests based there. How is it, then, that U.S. (or Saudi) land-based, sea-based, and space-based early warning radars and other detection systems completely missed what media have described as a small-cloud of drones and cruise missiles at any point along the trail from their deployment and preparation, to their launch and flight, to their impact? Are Iranian weapon systems so much more sophisticated than the U.S. military’s attack-detection technology and anti-missile/anti-aircraft weaponry that the Iranian missiles and drones were never seen and not a shot was gotten off against them? Or did someone order a very blind eye be turned toward Iran for a few hours?
–3. Is it really plausible to believe that the purported Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia just happened to occur on the eve of Israel’s national election, a contest in which war-hawk and Iran-hater Netanyahu and his party were on the political ropes. Is it really a stretch to believe that an offensive Iranian air-attack on Saudi Arabia on the eve of the election would cause some of the Israeli voters who were intending not to vote for Netanyahu and the Likud Party, to be moved by the Iranian attack to think again and then snug back up to the anti-Iran crusader Netanyahu? Coincidences are rare in the lives of individuals and nations, and this a coincidence of such enormous proportions that it is quite hard to believe.
Let me conclude by saying that I do not know if Iran attacked the Saudis’ oil facility or not. But what I do know, at this point, is (a) that the United States government has no reason to attack Iran whether or not it attacked Aramco; that is the Saudis job is they choose to do it; (b) that it is more important to find out why the U.S. military seems to have absolutely failed in its early warning mission on the Arab Peninsula and the seas around it, and if such an utter failure also is likely to occur here in the United States; and (c) that Israel always is out only for itself, and that it and its U.S. citizen allies (paid agents?) will cooperate to do whatever it is they decide is required to service Israel’s and Netanyahu’s interests, even if it means pushing the United States into an unnecessary war.
