U.S. President Donald Trump has said that it is increasingly ‘looking like’ Iran was behind an attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities over the weekend, but said it was still too early to be sure.
Iran has seized a boat suspected of being used to smuggle fuel and arrested its 11 crew members near a vital oil shipping lane, state television reported on Monday.
President Trump on Sunday suggested U.S. investigators had ‘reason to believe’ they knew who launched crippling attacks against a key Saudi oil facility, and vowed that America was ‘locked and loaded depending on verification.’
Iran denied on Sunday it was involved in Yemen rebel drone attacks the previous day targeting the world’s biggest oil processing facility and an oil field in Saudi Arabia, just hours after America’s top diplomat alleged that Tehran was behind the ‘unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply.’
Drones launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels attacked the world’s largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia and another major oil field Saturday, sparking huge fires at a vulnerable chokepoint for global energy supplies.
Saudi oil sites attacked on Saturday — in a drone assault linked to Iran — were seen to have sustained damage after satellite images released Sunday captured char marks and smoke billowing from the world’s largest oil processing facility.
Israel must be given free rein to act against Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on September 12 as talks concluded in Sochi where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss security coordination in Syria.
Iran has denounced a ‘U.S.-Israeli plot’ to put pressure on the United Nations nuclear watchdog, after the IAEA called in recent days for more cooperation from Tehran following what diplomats say was the detection of uranium particles at an undeclared site.
President Trump’s stunning dismissal of John R. Bolton clears the stage for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — along with Vice President Mike Pence, one of the few members of Mr. Trump’s original national security inner circle still standing — to wield more influence over a raft of foreign policy challenges confronting the White House.
The United States on Tuesday announced sanctions on a ‘wide range of terrorists and their supporters,’ including the Palestinian group Hamas and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, on the eve of the 18th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to fly to Sochi on Thursday, just five days before Election Day, to discuss strengthening the security cooperation between the two countries in Syria.
Hezbollah has set up a production and conversion site for precision missiles near the town of Al-Nabi Sheeth in Lebanon’s Bekaa, Israel’s military announced on Tuesday, saying the facility was established in recent years as a site for the production of weapons led by Iran and Hezbollah.
An Israeli drone was downed in Lebanon Sunday night simultaneous to a bevy of rockets fired at Israel from Syria.
The head of the UN’s nuclear inspection agency Monday called on Tehran to explain the findings of a test conducted in April.
A Syrian security official blamed Israel and the US for an attack on a base belonging to a pro-Iranian Shiite militia in Syria near the border with Iraq on Monday.
In his latest dramatic revelation on Iran’s nuclear program, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday exposed the existence of a secret nuclear facility in central Iran in which he said the regime had conducted experiments in the pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Sources told the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent a warning letter to Lebanese President Michel Aoun, urging him to dismantle a factory set up by Hezbollah in the Bekaa region of Lebanon to develop and modernize the missiles before Israel attacks it.
Iran on Sunday hinted that it could release ‘within days’ a UK-flagged oil tanker it had seized in July in sensitive Gulf waters amid rising hostilities with Britain’s ally the United States.
Unidentified aircraft launched strikes on a base belonging to an Iran-backed militia on the Syrian side of its border with Iraq, killing several people early Monday, an observer and Arabic media reported.
The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday launched a large-scale exercise simulating war against Hezbollah and other pro-Iranian forces in the north of the country.