Saudi Arabia shut its East-West oil pipeline Saturday after drones hit it in the Riyadh and Medina regions, and Donald Trump, asked about it in Dublin, said Iran "probably" did it and that the Houthis had phoned to say they want no fight with him.
Iran and its proxies now sit on both routes Saudi oil takes to the sea. The Saudis pump crude 1,200 kilometers through that line, Abqaiq to Yanbu on the Red Sea, to get around the Strait of Hormuz; they more than doubled their Red Sea exports since the war began, the International Energy Agency says, and the pipeline carried 4 to 5 percent of the world's oil. The Saudi ministries closed it "as a precaution," reported "human injuries and damage," and said the kingdom has "chosen not to retaliate at this stage."
Iraq says the drones flew from its Maysan province and fired the commander there.
Trump, in Dublin: "The Houthis called us and they don't want to fight with us. They let us know, they don't want to fight with us. They don't want me to go after them." He said he spoke with Mohammed bin Salman after the attack. The crown prince had pressed him for American strikes on the Houthis, Axios reported. Trump offered a date instead: the Iran war ends "right after the mid-terms, actually… oil will come tumbling down when that happens."
Twenty hours earlier, at the Pentagon, Trump had told the country why it fights, and in his own 9/11 proclamation he had said where the enemy lives.
