Missiles that struck Saudi Arabia snuck under the radar from Iran

US investigators have pinpointed the launch site of a missile attack on Saudi oil facilities to near Iran’s border with Iraq.

Mike Pompeo, with Bahrain's Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa in Washington, is due in Saudi Arabia to discuss the missile crisis. Picture: AP

US and Saudi military forces and their elaborate air-defence systems failed to detect the launch of airstrikes aimed at Saudi Arabian oil facilities, allowing dozens of drones and missiles to hit their targets.

Saudi and US focus had been largely on the kingdom’s southern border with Yemen, where Riyadh has been fighting Iran­ian-backed Houthi rebels, US ­officials said. The attacks, however, originated from Iranian territory in the northern Persian Gulf, people familiar with the investigation into the strikes said.

As Saudi officials review information coming in from the US, Kuwait and their own investigators, they are increasingly confident that drones and mis­siles launched near Iran’s southern border with Iraq flew low to the ground on their way to slamming into the heart of the Saudi oil industry early on Saturday.

Investigators have found ­debris that appears to be Iranian cruise-missile technology.

“Everything points to them,” a Saudi official said, referring to Iran. “The debris, the intel and the points of impact.”

US and Saudi officials didn’t anticipate a strike from inside Iran, rather than through one of its proxy forces or elite military units. Saudi air defences were monitoring maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, where US officials charge Iran has seized passing oil tankers and flown drones near American war ships.

However, the absence of air-defence coverage left Saudi’s eastern flank largely undefended by any US or Saudi air-defence systems, and reinforced a stark vulnerability as Tehran grows more frustrated over tougher US sanctions. The glaring blind spot also left Saudi Arabia exposed to a threat despite spending billions annually on its defence budget.

“You know, we don’t have an unblinking eye over the entire Middle East at all times,” Marine General Joe Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Wednesday.

The US deployed a Patriot missile system to Prince Sultan Air Base this year, but that system is intended to defend the base, where more than 500 US troop are deployed, along with the area immediately around it. That system wasn’t within a range to defend against the Saturday attack.

The attack appeared to come from an Iranian base hundreds of kilometres away in the northern region of the Persian Gulf. US officials said there had been indications of unusual activity at the base just before the attack, but declined to elaborate. The Houthis have claimed responsibility, but the Trump administration has instead blamed Iran.

In the attack, Iran deployed more sophisticated missile technology a US official described as very manoeuvrable and with a lower signature and therefore harder to detect.

Although there was no clear surveillance of the missile launch site, US military officials are ­examining evidence they say points directly to Iran. Officials said they had two types of evidence: circumstantial, such as communications before the ­attack, and forensic, which ­includes remnants of missiles and drones, chemicals and blast ­damage.

US officials have found at the attack sites in Saudi Arabia major components from at least one missile that didn’t fully ­explode. Investigators also have found debris that appears to be Iranian cruise-missile technology. Saudi officials said they had found cruise missile parts similar in design to a new weapon, known as Quds, used by Houthi rebels in Yemen to attack southern Saudi Arabia.

Kuwait, to the north of the ­attack sites, is investigating ­reports of a drone sighting in ­Kuwait City ahead of the strikes, suggesting that the attack had been launched from the north, an area that includes southwestern Iran.

The Saudi Defence Ministry is expected to release its preliminary findings on Thursday, as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives for meetings in Jeddah to discuss the crisis. Iran has denied it carried out the attacks and accused the Trump administration of spreading misinformation.

The Wall Street Journal