U.S. intelligence reportedly points to Iran as source of Saudi attack, but can reports be trusted?
newsdepo.com
On Monday evening, NBC News reported that sources inside U.S. intelligence agencies believe that the attack on Saudi oil processing facilities “originated in” Iran. This does not necessarily mean that the drones or missiles involved literally flew to theU.S. intelligence reportedly points to Iran as source of Saudi attack, but can reports be trusted?
On Monday evening, NBC News reported that sources inside U.S. intelligence agencies believe that the attack on Saudi oil processing facilities “originated in” Iran. This does not necessarily mean that the drones or missiles involved literally flew to the facilities from a site in Iran, but that the attack “displays a level of sophistication” outside the range of Houthi militia forces in Yemen, which have taken responsibility for the attach. The sources also indicated that Democrats would not dispute that Iran was behind the attack. That may well be the case, but it still leaves open an enormous question: Can we trust that analysis? After all, the intelligence community wasn’t just wrong about the situation in Iraq previous to the U.S. invasion there; it was completely wrong. Wrong about the presence of weapons of mass destruction, wrong about the nature of facilities and equipment, wrong about the ease with which a post-war Iraq could be converted into a model of a modern, stable nation. That completely inaccurate picture of Iraq has directly caused the deaths of over 4,400 U.S. service members, left over 31,000 injured—often for life—and cost the lives of at least half a million Iraqis. To be fair, there were many at the CIA, NSA, and other intelligence agencies who were absolutely right in their analysis of both the conditions that existed in Iraq at the time, and the consequences of a military incursion. But those voices, the voices backed by evidence and reason, were drowned out by highlight selective editing that mined a variety of data and pulled out only those bits that supported a preconceived notion of “the right thing to do.” Senior leadership at the Pentagon and the White House had in their hands the evidence that showed that Iraq was not developing nuclear weapons, that Iraq did not have a significant program developing either chemical or biological weapons, and that Iraq was not directly connected to the terrorists who attacked America on 9/11. They simply chose to either ignore or actively suppress all that evidence. In a phone call to legislators, Trump’s special representative for Iran said that the Saudis considered the attack on the oil facilities “their 9/11.” That strikes a lot of Americans as offensive—even leaving out the fact that the first 9/11 could easily be considered as belonging to Saudi Arabia. This wasn’t something that cost thousands of lives. Where it hurt the kingdom of Mohammed bin Salman was in the pocketbook. What the attack really does share with 9/11 is that it was highly asymmetric, with the cost of the attack a tiny fraction of the dollar damage done. The other thing it may share is serving as a pretext for invasion. Because, except for a single-letter edit in the target, the United States seems poised to make the same huge mistake again. Read more