1056 Sanders warns Trump against illegal Iran strike. Ron Paul: don't take Neocon Bait

Sanders warns Trump against illegal Iran strike. Ron Paul: don't take
Neocon Bait

Newsletter published on September 18, 2019

(1) Sanders warns Trump against illegal Iran strike
(2) Ron Paul: Will Trump Take Neocon Bait and Attack Iran over Saudi Strike?
(3) Ansarallah underlines home-made nature of all Yemeni drones
(4) Yemen's Houthis say Aramco plants still a target: tweets
(5) Costly Saudi defenses prove no match for drones, cruise missiles
(6) Putin proposes Russian missile defence for Saudi after oil attack

(1) Sanders warns Trump against illegal Iran strike
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/09/sanders-warn-tump-iran-strike-saudi-arabia-oil-attack.html

Bryant Harris September 16, 2019

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is warning Donald Trump that he
does not have the legal authority to strike Iran.

The attack on the Saudi Aramco oil facility over the weekend and
President Donald Trump’s subsequent tweet that the United States is
"locked and loaded" immediately prompted presidential candidate Sen.
Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to fire back.

Sanders and other progressive lawmakers stressed that Trump does not
have the legal authority from Congress to launch an offensive strike
against Iran.

"Mr. Trump, the Constitution of the United States is perfectly clear,"
Sanders tweeted. "Only Congress — not the President — can declare war.
And Congress will not give you the authority to start another disastrous
war in the Middle East just because the brutal Saudi dictatorship told
you to."

And in an interview on ABC on Sunday, hours before Trump’s tweet, Mayor
Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana — another 2020 contender —
criticized Trump’s maximum pressure strategy against Iran.

"There is more than enough destabilizing the Middle East and the Persian
Gulf without fears that a president could destabilize it further with
the next tweet," said Buttigieg. "We need to make sure right now that we
create options to prevent things from escalating further."

Trump noted that he was "waiting to hear from the kingdom as to who they
believe was the cause of the attack" before proceeding.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for the
attack, which occurred some 620 miles from the war-torn country. But US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said over the weekend that there was no
evidence the attack came from Yemen and the Trump administration
maintains that the attacks came directly from Iran.

Saudi Arabia said today that Riyadh has not reached the same conclusion
that Iran was the staging ground for the attacks. Still, the Saudis did
claim that the drones that struck the oil facility were Iranian and did
not originate from Yemen. Iran denies the charges and no side has
presented evidence to corroborate their competing claims.

And Trump implied that Iran was telling "a very big lie" in a separate
tweet today. The president referenced an incident earlier this year when
Tehran shot down a US drone after claiming it was flying over Iranian
air space even as Washington placed the drone’s coordinates over
international waters.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Chris Murphy, D-Conn., tweeted
that "no matter where this latest drone strike was launched from, there
is no short or long-term upside to the US military getting more deeply
involved in the growing regional contest between the Saudis and
Iranians," going on to lambast Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against
Tehran.

But not all Democrats were as eager to push back against Trump’s tweets.

Murphy’s colleague on the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Chris Coons,
D-Del., struck a more hawkish message in an appearance today on the
pro-Trump "Fox and Friends," where guests frequently go to directly
relay messages to the president. Coons argued that "this may very well
be the thing that calls for military intelligence against Iran if that’s
what the intelligence supports."

Sanders’ campaign co-chair, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., pushed back
against Coons on Twitter.

"The only body that can call for offensive military action against Iran
is Congress," tweeted Khanna.

The California Democrat used Coons’ remarks to renew calls for lawmakers
to pass his legislation barring the Trump administration from using
funds in an offensive strike against Iran absent congressional
authorization.

Khanna and Trump ally Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., teamed up to include the
legislation as an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill,
which the House passed 220-197 in July. But Senate Armed Services
Committee Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., an Iran hawk, forestalled
Democrats from adding similar language to the upper chamber’s version of
the bill.

The Gaetz-Inhofe split illustrates the national security fissure between
the non-interventionist and hawkish wings of the Republican Party as
Trump’s allies continue to vie for his ear on national security issues.

"It is now time for the US to put on the table an attack on Iranian oil
refineries if they continue their provocations or increase nuclear
enrichment," tweeted Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., another close Trump
confidant. "Iran will not stop their misbehavior until the consequences
become more real, like attacking their refineries, which will break the
regime’s back."

Yet Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who also enjoys close access to Trump, pushed
back against Graham on CNN, opting instead to focus on the Houthis’
claim of credit for the attack.

"Really the answer is trying to have a negotiated cease-fire and peace
in Yemen, and bombing Iran won’t do that," said Paul. "Iran’s military
spending is about $17 billion. Saudi Arabia spends about $83 billion."

It remains unclear whether the Trump administration would seek a
congressional authorization to strike Iran — or if such an authorization
would be able to pass. But Trump has twice struck Syrian military
installations owned by President Bashar al-Assad without congressional
authorization. The Trump administration has yet to disclose its legal
justification for both strikes.

(2) Ron Paul: Will Trump Take Neocon Bait and Attack Iran over Saudi Strike?
https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-neocon-bait-attack-iran-over-saudi-strike/5689496

Will Trump Take Neocon Bait and Attack Iran over Saudi Strike?

By Rep. Ron Paul

Global Research, September 17, 2019

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity 16 September 2019

The recent attacks on Saudi oil facilities by Yemeni Houthi forces
demonstrate once again that an aggressive foreign policy often brings
unintended consequences and can result in blowback. In 2015 Saudi Arabia
attacked its neighbor, Yemen, because a coup in that country ousted the
Saudi-backed dictator. Four years later Yemen is in ruins, with nearly
100,000 Yemenis killed and millions more facing death by starvation. It
has been rightly called the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet.

But rich and powerful Saudi Arabia did not defeat Yemen. In fact, the
Saudis last month asked the Trump Administration to help facilitate
talks with the Houthis in hopes that the war, which has cost Saudi
Arabia tens of billions of dollars, could finally end without Saudi
crown prince Mohammad bin Salman losing too much face. Washington
admitted earlier this month that those talks had begun.

The surprise Houthi attack on Saturday disrupted half of Saudi Arabia’s
oil and gas production and shocked Washington. Predictably, however, the
neocons are using the attack to call for war with Iran!

Sen. Lindsay Graham, one of the few people in Washington who makes John
Bolton look like a dove, Tweeted yesterday that,

"Drone Attack" on Saudi Oil – Who Benefits?

"It is now time for the US to put on the table an attack on Iranian oil
refineries…"

Graham is the perfect embodiment of the saying, "when all you have is a
hammer, everything looks like a nail." No matter what the problem, for
Graham the solution is war.

Likewise, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – who is supposed to represent
US diplomacy – jumped to blame Iran for the attack on Saudi Arabia,
Tweeting that,

"Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy
supply."

Of course, he provided no evidence even as the Houthis themselves took
responsibility for the bombing.

What is remarkable is that all of Washington’s warmongers are ready for
war over what is actually a retaliatory strike by a country that is the
victim of Saudi aggression, not the aggressor itself. Yemen did not
attack Saudi Arabia in 2015. It was the other way around. If you start a
war and the other country fights back, you should not be entitled to
complain about how unfair the whole thing is.

The establishment reaction to the Yemeni oilfield strike reminds me of a
hearing in the House Foreign Affairs Committee just before the US
launched the 2003 Iraq war. As I was arguing against the authorization
for that war, I pointed out that Iraq had never attacked the United
States. One of my colleagues stopped me in mid-sentence, saying, "let me
remind the gentleman that the Iraqis have been shooting at our planes
for years." True, but those planes were bombing Iraq!

The neocons want a US war on Iran at any cost. They may feel temporarily
at a disadvantage with the departure of their ally in the Trump
Administration, John Bolton. However, the sad truth is that there are
plenty more John Boltons in the Administration. And they have allies in
the Lindsay Grahams in Congress.

Yemen has demonstrated that it can fight back against Saudi aggression.
The only sensible way forward is for a rapid end to this four-year
travesty, and the Saudis would be wise to wake up to the mess they’ve
created for themselves. Whatever the case, US participation in Saudi
Arabia’s war on Yemen must end immediately and neocon lies about Iran’s
role in the war must be refuted and resisted.

(3) Ansarallah underlines home-made nature of all Yemeni drones
https://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13980625000191

Mon Sep 16, 2019 11:22

TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior official of Ansarallah movement dismissed western
and Arab media reports claiming that the drones which bombed the Saudi
oil facilities on Saturday were imported, stressing the home-made nature
of all Yemeni drones.

"The Yemeni drones have not been imported but they are indigenized and
manufactured in Yemen," Head of the Huma Rights and Legal Department of
the Political Bureau of Ansarallah Movement Abdul Wahab al-Mahbashi told
the al-Arabi TV channel on Sunday.

Yemen’s Ansarullah movement announced on Saturday that its drones had
successfully attacked two oil plants in the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil
industry, stressing that the attacks were a firm response to Riyadh’s
relentless bombardment of Yemen. ...

In mid-May, Yemeni soldiers, backed by allied fighters from Popular
Committees, launched a major operation against the strategic oil
facility in Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the Riyadh regime’s
devastating military aggression and siege of the impoverished country.
Following the attack, Saudi Arabia stopped pumping crude oil on the
major pipeline across the country. The retaliatory attack also led to
the rise of oil prices and fall of stock markets in Persian Gulf Arab
countries.

The attack bears extra significance at this stage of the war because the
Yemeni forces could fly armed drones so far and carry out precision
strikes and then fly them back while evading all Saudi defenses on the
way. The long-range drones open unlimited possibilities for Yemeni
resistance forces, which have already surpassed all expectations by
surviving the massive Saudi onslaught and mounted a potent response with
an arsenal of ballistic missiles.

Yemen's Ansarullah movement has also warned that its recent attack on a
major Saudi oil facility was the start of operations against 300 vital
targets in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The Ansarullah said its drone attack on pumping stations of the Saudi
state oil company Aramco was the start of operations against 300 vital
targets. The group added that other planned targets include military
headquarters and facilities in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating
campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the
government of former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to
power and crushing the Ansarullah movement.

Despite Riyadh's claims that it is bombing the positions of the
Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and
civilian infrastructures. Weddings, funerals, schools and hospitals, as
well as water and electricity plants, have been targeted, killing and
wounding hundreds of thousands.

France, the United States, the United Kingdom and some other Western
countries have faced criticisms over arms sales to the Saudi Arabia and
the UAE, whose aggression against Yemen has affected 28 million people
and caused what the United Nations calls "one of the worst humanitarian
crises in the world". According to the world body, Yemen is suffering
from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.

A UN panel has compiled a detailed report of civilian casualties caused
by the Saudi military and its allies during their war against Yemen,
saying the Riyadh-led coalition has used precision-guided munitions in
its raids on civilian targets.

(4) Yemen's Houthis say Aramco plants still a target: tweets
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-aramco-houthis-idUSKBN1W10KL

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019 / 5:26 PM / 2 DAYS AGO

DUBAI (Reuters) - Yemen’s Houthi movement said on Monday that Saudi
Aramco’s oil processing plants were still a target and could be attacked
at "any moment", warning foreigners to leave the area.

The attacks on Aramco plants in Abqaiq and Khurais in the kingdom’s
eastern region were carried out by drones with normal and jet engines,
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said in a tweet.

Sarea said Saudi Arabia should stop its "aggression and blockade on Yemen".

Reporting By Aziz El Yaakoubi; Editing by Kevin Liffey

(5) Costly Saudi defenses prove no match for drones, cruise missiles
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-aramco-security/costly-saudi-defenses-prove-no-match-for-drones-cruise-missiles-idUSKBN1W22FR

Stephen Kalin, Sylvia Westall

September 18, 2019

RIYADH/DUBAI (Reuters) - Billions of dollars spent by Saudi Arabia on
cutting edge Western military hardware mainly designed to deter high
altitude attacks has proved no match for low-cost drones and cruise
missiles used in a strike that crippled its giant oil industry.

Saturday’s assault on Saudi oil facilities that halved production has
exposed how ill-prepared the Gulf state is to defend itself despite
repeated attacks on vital assets during its four-and-a-half year foray
into the war in neighboring Yemen.

Saudi Arabia and the United States have said they believe Iran, the
kingdom’s arch-enemy, was probably behind the strike. On Tuesday, a U.S.
official said Washington believed the attack originated in southwestern
Iran. Three U.S. officials said it involved both cruise missiles and drones.

Tehran has denied such accusations, saying that Yemenis opposing
Saudi-led forces carried it out. Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement is
alone in claiming responsibility.

Iran maintains the largest ballistic and cruise missile capabilities in
the Middle East that could overwhelm virtually any Saudi missile defense
system, according to think-tank CSIS, given the geographic proximity of
Tehran and its regional proxy forces.

But even more limited strikes have proved too much for Saudi Arabia,
including recent ones by Houthis who claimed successful attacks on a
civilian airport, oil pumping stations and the Shaybah oilfield.

"We are open. Any real facility has no real coverage," a Saudi security
source said.

The Sept. 14 assault on two plants belonging to state oil giant Saudi
Aramco was the worst on regional oil facilities since Saddam Hussein
torched Kuwait’s oil wells during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis.

The company said on Tuesday that production would be back to normal
quicker than initially feared, but the attack nonetheless shocked oil
markets.

Riyadh said preliminary results indicated the weapons used were Iranian
but the launch location was still undetermined.

Authorities initially specified drones, but three U.S. officials said
the use of cruise missiles and drones indicated a higher degree of
complexity and sophistication than initially thought.

"The attack is like Sept. 11th for Saudi Arabia, it is a game changer,"
said a Saudi security analyst who declined to be named.

"Where are the air defense systems and the U.S. weaponry for which we
spent billions of dollars to protect the kingdom and its oil facilities?
If they did this with such precision, they can also hit the desalination
plants and more targets."

The main Saudi air defense system, positioned mainly to defend major
cities and installations, has long been the U.S.-made long-range Patriot
system.

It has successfully intercepted high-altitude ballistic missiles fired
by the Houthis at Saudi cities, including the capital Riyadh, since a
Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen against the group in March 2015.

But since drones and cruise missiles fly more slowly and at lower
altitudes, they are difficult for Patriots to detect with adequate time
to intercept.

"Drones are a huge challenge for Saudi Arabia because they often fly
under the radar and given long borders with Yemen and Iraq, the kingdom
is very vulnerable," said a senior Gulf official. ...

The Saudi security source and two industry sources said Riyadh has been
aware of the drone threat for several years and has been in discussions
with consultants and vendors for possible solutions but has not
installed anything new.

The security source said authorities moved a Patriot battery to the
Shaybah oilfield after it was hit last month. There are Patriots at
Aramco’s Ras Tanura refinery.

"Most conventional air defense radar is designed for high- altitude
threats like missiles," said Dave DesRoches at the National Defense
University in Washington.

"Cruise missiles and drones operate close to the earth, so they aren’t
seen because of the earth’s curvature. Drones are too small and don’t
have heat signature for most radar."

Intercepting drones possibly worth several hundred dollars with Patriots
is also extremely expensive, with each missile costing around $3 million.

Jorg Lamprecht, CEO and co-founder of U.S. airspace security firm
Dedrone, said there are more effective ways of dealing with drones,
especially in swarms.

A combination of radio frequency detectors and radar detect them,
high-powered cameras verify payloads and technologies like jamming
demobilize them, he said.

But the latest technology presents its own challenges: frequency jamming
could disrupt industrial activities and have negative health effects on
people.

Armed drones are becoming more readily available, so the threat to vital
infrastructure is rising disproportionately, according to U.S.
intelligence consultancy Soufan Group.

Saudi policymakers have long dreaded a strike against a desalination
plant in Jubail which serves central and eastern Saudi Arabia. A
successful attack would deprive millions of people of water and could
take a long time to repair, the Saudi source said.

"It’s a very target-rich environment," said an industry source with
knowledge of Saudi Arabia. "They’ve kicked them right where it hurts and
there’s plenty more of them around."

Reporting by Stephen Kalin and Sylvia Westall, additional reporting by
Rania El Gamal and Alexander Cornwell in Dubai and Samia Nakhoul in
Beirut; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Ghaida Ghantous and Mike
Collett-White

(6) Putin proposes Russian missile defence for Saudi after oil attack

https://www.rt.com/news/468948-putin-saudi-arabia-missiles/

Putin to Saudi Arabia: Our air defenses can protect you, like they do
Turkey and Iran

Published time: 16 Sep, 2019 19:05

Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested Saudi Arabia should buy
Russian air defense systems to protect its oil facilities from drone
attacks, pointing to Iran and Turkey, who operate S-300 and S-400
missiles, respectively.

"Saudi Arabia needs to make a smart decision, as Iran did by buying our
S-300, and as Mr. Erdogan did by deciding to buy the most advanced S-400
Triumph air defense systems from Russia," Putin told reporters in Ankara
on Monday. "These kinds of systems are capable of defending any kind of
infrastructure in Saudi Arabia from any kind of attack."

Putin was answering a question about the recent drone attack on Saudi
Arabian oil facilities, which Washington has blamed on Iran, though
Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility. A coalition led by
Saudi Arabia invaded Yemen in 2015 and has fought the Houthis there since.

The recent escalation of that conflict was not among the topics
discussed at the trilateral summit in Ankara between Putin, Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The
three leaders were, however, in agreement that the conflict in Yemen
must end as soon as possible.

Putin cited the Koran to admonish the Saudi coalition’s war on Yemen,
saying that the Muslim holy book said the only legitimate form of
violence was self-defense and, in that context, spoke of the
Russian-made missile systems as a possible solution.

Iran has operated the S-300 missile systems since 2017, and the first
batch of the S-400s was delivered to Turkey in July. Ankara’s purchase
of the S-400s has caused it significant strife with Washington, which is
refusing to deliver Turkey’s F-35 fighters, fearing that their computer
systems will be compromised by the Russian weaponry.