US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday accused Iran of leading attacks on Saudi oil plants that have cut the kingdom\u2019s output roughly in half, as he ruled out Yemeni involvement and denounced Tehran for engaging in false diplomacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yemen\u2019s Iran-aligned Houthi group claimed credit for the attacks on two plants at the heart of Saudi Arabia\u2019s oil industry, including the world\u2019s biggest petroleum processing facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTehran is behind nearly 100 attacks on Saudi Arabia while Rouhani and Zarif pretend to engage in diplomacy,\u201d Pompeo said, referring to Iran\u2019s President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAmid all the calls for de-escalation, Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world\u2019s energy supply,\u201d he added.The State Department declined to provide any evidence to bolster Pompeo\u2019s claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe call on all nations to publicly and unequivocally condemn Iran\u2019s attacks,\u201d Pompeo said, warning that the Trump administration would work with its allies to make sure Iran was \u201cheld accountable for its aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tweets signaled a more hawkish stance in Washington towards Tehran, following signs of a possible thaw in relations between the two nations after months of escalation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, US President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from a 2015 pact that aimed to keep a lid on Tehran\u2019s nuclear ambitions and he has imposed a series of sanctions that have crippled Iran\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in recent weeks, Trump has said he would be open to meeting with Rouhani, perhaps on the sidelines of the United National General Assembly in New York later this month. Pompeo has said such talks could take place without any preconditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, a close Trump ally and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Saturday\u2019s attacks showed Iran was not interested in peace and was instead pursuing nuclear weapons and regional dominance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday accused Iran of leading attacks on Saudi oil plants that have cut the kingdom\u2019s output roughly in half, as he ruled out Yemeni involvement and denounced Tehran for engaging in false diplomacy. Yemen\u2019s Iran-aligned Houthi group claimed credit for the attacks on two plants at the heart […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70428,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70429,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70427\/revisions\/70429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}