Oil Attack: Iran Issues ‘Battlefield’ Warning As US Deploys Troops

Iran’s top commander on Saturday warned any country that attacks
the Islamic republic will become the “main battlefield”, the latest
salvo in the diplomatic crisis between arch-foes Tehran and
Washington after attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure and
US President Donald Trump’s decision to send American troops to
bolster the kingdom’s defences.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for the
strikes on Saudi energy giant Aramco’s Abqaiq processing plant and
Khurais oilfield, which initially halved the kingdom’s oil output,
but the US says it has concluded the attacks involved cruise
missiles from Iran and amounted to “an act of war”. Saudi Arabia’s
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel Al Jubeir again blamed
Iran for the attacks on Saturday, saying that Tehran bore full
responsibility.

“Be careful, a limited aggression will not remain limited. We
will pursue any aggressor. We are after punishment and we will
continue until the full destruction of any aggressor,” the head of
the Guards, Major General Hossein Salami, said in remarks broadcast
on state TV.

“Whoever wants their land to become the main battlefield, go
ahead,” he told a news conference in Tehran.

“We will never allow any war to encroach upon Iran’s
territory.

“We hope that they don’t make a strategic mistake”, he said,
listing past US military “adventures” against Iran.

Saudi Arabia, which has been bogged down in a five-year war
across its southern border in Yemen, has said Iran “unquestionably
sponsored” the attacks.

The kingdom says the weapons used in the attacks were
Iranian-made, but it stopped short of directly blaming its regional
rival.

Maj Gen Salami was speaking at Tehran’s Islamic Revolution and
Holy Defence museum during the unveiling of an exhibition of what
Iran says are US and other drones captured in its territory.

It featured a badly damaged drone with US military markings said
to be an RQ-4 Global Hawk that Iran downed in June, as well as an
RQ-170 Sentinel captured in 2011 and still intact.

The United States on Friday imposed more sanctions, targeting
the Central Bank of Iran, which was already under US sanctions, the
National Development Fund of Iran – the country’s sovereign wealth
fund – and an Iranian company that US officials say is used to
conceal financial transfers for Iranian military purchases.

Mr Trump said they were the toughest sanctions the US had ever
imposed on another country.

“This is a sign of US desperation … When they repeatedly
sanction the same institution, this means their attempt at bringing
the Iranian nation to its knees under ‘maximum pressure’ has
failed,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters in
remarks shown on state television.

He was arriving in New York for the annual UN General Assembly
next week, where he is expected to meet the foreign ministers of
the remaining signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal.

In a further bout of fiery rhetoric against Saudi Arabia from a
key Iranian ally, Lebanon’s Hezbollah warned Saudi Arabia on Friday
against betting on a war against Iran because it would destroy the
country and urged Riyadh to halt the war in Yemen instead of buying
more air defences.

“Don’t bet on a war against Iran because they will destroy you,”
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised
speech. “Your house is made of glass and your economy is made of
glass,” he said.

Iran denied reports that a successful cyber attack had struck
its oil infrastructure.

“Contrary to Western media claims, investigations done today
show no successful cyber attack was made on the country’s oil
installations and other crucial infrastructure,” the government’s
cyber security office said.

The statement did not specify which reports it was
addressing.

NetBlocks, an organisation that tracks internet outages, tweeted
early Saturday that “network data show intermittent disruptions to
internet connectivity in Iran.”

But it said the cause was unclear and impact limited, affecting
“online industrial and government platforms” and specific
providers.

“Data are consistent with a cyber attack or unplanned technical
incident on affected networks as opposed to a purposeful withdrawal
or shutdown incident,” it added.

Iran’s Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi
has acknowledged in the past that Tehran has “been facing cyber
terrorism – such as Stuxnet.”

The Stuxnet virus, discovered in 2010, is believed to have been
engineered by Israel and the US to damage nuclear facilities in
Iran.

Iran at the time accused the US and Israel of using the virus to
target its centrifuges used for uranium enrichment.

Culled from thenational.ae

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