
Saudi Arabia oil facilities ablaze after drone strikes - lifeisstillgood
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-49699429
======
lifeisstillgood
This is an interesting comment

>> However, many observers consider that the Iranian role has been
exaggerated, taking a fairly distant supporting role at most, with the Houthis
acting very much on their own agenda, rather than as an Iranian proxy.
Overall, the evidence from SIPRI data, the UN panel, and other sources,
appears to support the idea that, while Iranian arms supplies have not been
trivial, the primary sources of arms from the Houthis has been local, from
those sections of the Yemeni army that supported them, from their former pro-
Saleh allies, captured weapons, and the sort of locally assembled equipment
discussed above.

[#] [https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2019/03/19/who-
is-a...](https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2019/03/19/who-is-arming-
the-yemen-war-an-update/)

Thanks to earlier post for the link

The implication from tufts is that this is not rebels firing missiles made
elsewhere but assembling parts from global (dual use?) supply chains - which
does rather imply drone / UAv manufacturing is within reach of any state and
most groupings.

~~~
kingofpandora
Yeah, it's common for many to assume Iranian _aligned_ factions such as the
Houthis or Hezbollah have no agency, motivations or origins of their own.

~~~
NeverFade
The Houthis wouldn't be so keen to wage war on a rich, large, powerful nation
like KSA if the Iranians weren't commanding them to do it.

Also notice how dramatically they stepped up their campaign against KSA since
Iran launched its aggressive campaign to lash out against economic sanctions.

There's no inherent reasons the Houthis should be launching sophisticated,
high-impact attacks on KSA on a weekly basis. This sort of escalation makes no
sense within their own geopolitical context, but makes perfect sense when you
consider Iran's contexts and regional goals.

Same for Hezbollah group in Lebanon against Israel. All the recent tensions in
that conflict can't be explained by the organic interests of the Lebanese
nation or people. In fact, a conflict with Israel is against the Lebanese
national interest and would lead to great destruction in Lebanon. However,
Hezbollah is escalating and building up towards that very conflict.

The vast majority of Hezbollah's budget is contributed by Iran:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_Hezbollah#Iran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_Hezbollah#Iran)

Iran can ill afford to make that investment if they don't get much out of it,
and it's pretty accurate to say Hezbollah is acting according to the interest
of Iran far more than any other set of interests, including the Lebanese
interest.

Hezbollah owes its power and arguably its existence to Iran. It's naive to
expect it to act independently of Iranian interests.

~~~
elgenie
Huh? Saudi Arabia intervened in the Yemeni civil war in 2015 and has been
doing bombing sorties against the Houthis on a regular basis.

Without the Saudi intervention, the Houthis would most likely not have much of
a relationship with Iran at all.

~~~
NeverFade
KSA tried to restore the internationally-recognized president Abdrabbuh Mansur
Hadi after the Houthis ousted him. The Houthis had strong ties with Iran prior
to this intervention, and in fact the KSA intervention aimed to prevent a
Houthi takeover that would bring strong Iranian influence and effective
control to Yemen.

Either way, the KSA intervention failed, and the Houthis were able to take
over and establish themselves as the dominant power in Yemen, so my assertion
stand: they currently have no organic reason to launch a campaign against KSA.
Normally a rebel force in this situation would focus on stabilizing their own
rule in their country.

~~~
elgenie
The Houthis only control the northwestern part of Yemen, which borders Saudi
Arabia. Though that represents a lot of the population, stabilizing control
over the entire country is difficult when fighting on two fronts and being
bombed, as they’ve been for more than four years, and with Saudi Arabian
support to their opposition readily available over the border. The Saudi
bombing/blockade/invasion operation “Decisive Storm“ in 2015 failed, but the
followup “Restoring Hope” operation is ongoing.

Also, the Houthis had launched around 200 previous drone attacks against Saudi
in retaliation; this one was just significantly more successful, as opposed to
a new campaign.

In 2015, when the Saudi’s intervened, a UN assessment asserted that there was
no evidence of Iran having any “command and control” over the Houthis at the
time.

If intervening in the Yemeni civil war on the side of a losing faction and
bombing indiscriminately earned Saudi Arabia the Houthi’s enmity, pushed them
closer to Iran, and resulted in an effective reprisal, the moral of the story
would seem to be that actions have consequences and rashly attempting regional
hegemony carries risk.

~~~
NeverFade
UN assessments are controversial and, in my opinion, dead wrong and biased.
The UN wants the situation to deescalate, which is the opposite of what will
happen if Iran's role is acknowledged.

The rest of your comments don't contradict my initial statements. The Saudis
tried to keep Hadi in power and failed. The attacks against them by the
Houthis are inversely correlated to the Saudi intervention. The Saudis have
been scaling back their intervention, while the Houthis are attacking them
more and using firepower and weapons they obviously received from Iran.

The Houthis have no reason to keep escalating against KSA now that KSA has
virtually stopped their intervention. This would be an insane strategy - a
rebel force launching extremely aggressive and escalating attacks against a
large and powerful neighbor who stopped fighting them 3 years ago.

The only way you can explain this is that they are doing Iran's bidding. As
the weapons are Iranian, this is hardly far-fetched.

~~~
elgenie
Since the elements of the conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis date
back to the 1930s, you can safely assume that it will ebb and flow according
to each sides’ capabilities and willingness to seek advantage in the absence
of a formal accord.

As for the fantasy of Saudi Arabia stopping intervention, they bombed a Houthi
site in Dhamar less than two weeks ago in continuation of their bombing
campaign of the last four years. That attack, which killed around 100 people,
was merely the deadliest in this extremely dirty conflict, and likely sparked
the Houthi reprisal.

~~~
elgenie
* deadliest this year

------
mysterydip
Many places have only dealt with physical security at the ground level:
fences, ID checkpoints, etc. Drones just bypassing everything by flying over
have to force places to rethink that strategy.

~~~
baybal2
Add to that that conventional air defence doesn't work either.

Even the most poorly built drone can fly low and slow enough to be
invulnerable to anything but human aimed AA guns, but for that one can just
double the numbers

~~~
bretpiatt
Real world example of Zerg rush strategy. It will require whole new types of
air defense.

Military strategists are actively thinking through this and some high risk
private or public sector industrial targets are as well.

Statements like, "Just use EMP or signal jammers." do not take into account
the collateral damage and impacts EMP or broad wavelength frequency jamming
have either short or long term on the defenders.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
Indeed. And if you use aerial surveillance photos (google maps) and build a
star positioning sensor, you can do dead reckoning with no external radio
dependencies.

It's how the missiles do it, btw.

Or you can include GPS with sanity checks. Then only subtle deviation attacks
would work.

~~~
londons_explore
A downward facing IR camera, together with an IR map of the terrain and dead
reckoning is pretty much invulnerable to any kind of jamming.

Putting the electronics in a box protects against EMP attacks too.

Defending against that is hard!

------
fallingfrog
So, Saudi Arabia kills some 80,000 civilians in Yemen, and nobody cares, then
when the rebels hit a Saudi oil field, killing _nobody_ , and just destroying
a bunch of capital, and all of a sudden its terrorism and we’re going to talk
about intervening on the Saudis behalf?

Glad to see we’re still very clear on what is important (the property of the
ruling class, oil sheiks) and what isn’t (the lives of civilians and
children).

------
moksly
It’s striking how much of the cyberpunk I read in my youth is becoming
reality. Back then I though it would be cool, but now I really wish it would
stop.

~~~
imhoguy
Like from Mad Max 2 intro
[https://youtu.be/9n29c-q3_8Q](https://youtu.be/9n29c-q3_8Q)

------
kmlx
the facilities are big, and owned by Aramco, a $1 trillion state-owned
company. their IPO events began at the Dubai Ritz just yesterday. i would
assume this attack is not a coincidence.

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
Shorters using extreme tactics now.

~~~
benj111
The geopolitical implications of this could put up the prices of oil more than
the cost of the damage. This could actually be a net benefit for Aramco. The
shorters would be better off investing in Tesla and encouraging EVs.

------
lifeisstillgood
Is there an "observatory" that monitors drone warfare - I have heard of drones
dropping grenades down tank hatches, and lots of requests from western air
forces for anti drone measures but this is the first "big" target I have heard
of.

Plus, worryingly, this does seem a fairly automatable attack. The limiting
factor for the attackers must be the supply of drones plus any concerns about
wiping their geo fencing / remote self destructs built in. As someone who
would get his drones from the local curry's I presume the attackers have some
other supply channel ?

~~~
jayalpha
"Plus, worryingly, this does seem a fairly automatable attack."

Yes. Cheap. Easily available. Can be launched from a Camel. Don't have to
attack major facilities. It is enough to attack pipelines in the desert. How
much does a drone cost?

Please consider: [https://www.amazon.com/Brave-New-War-Terrorism-
Globalization...](https://www.amazon.com/Brave-New-War-Terrorism-
Globalization/dp/0470261951)

~~~
benj111
"Can be launched from a Camel"

That's a feature I wasn't expecting to hear about today.

~~~
jayalpha
Well, it was sloppy writing. But I assume the drones can be transported with
Camels.

~~~
benj111
Don't spoil it for me, I had visions of a landing platform on their humps
(would split in two, and fold down each side for ease of transport), and a
little spinning radar dish. Obviously you'd still have the tasselled rug
underneath, can I coin the name Bedouin Punk?

------
huhtenberg
Makes you wonder where the technology came from. Here's one reference from [1]
-

> _The Borkan is a modified Scud_

The newer models appear to be the originals, but I find it hard to believe
that Yemen could develop a radar-evading 1500km range drone on their own.
Someone's helping them, no doubt. Any ideas who that might be?

[1] [https://www.mintpressnews.com/uae-yemen-troop-withdrawal-
hou...](https://www.mintpressnews.com/uae-yemen-troop-withdrawal-houthi-new-
drones-missiles/260253/)

~~~
rapsey
Iran obviously. That is their ally.

~~~
alrs
...or any country that wants to see the United States drawn into a proxy war
for one of its client states in the Middle East. Or a country that wants to
see oil prices rise in the short-term. Or a a country that wants to make
European dependence on Saudi oil untenable, and put an end to the US sanctions
regime.

The US is now the world's largest oil exporter, so a limited confrontation
that leads to picking up slack in the global oil market _and_ selling more
arms to Saudi Arabia is very much in its interest.

It could be Iran, it could be others. It could be Iran and others, which is
likely, because Iran doesn't have much money to spend right now.

~~~
audiometry
USA is not the largest exporter of oil at all. It scarcely exceeds 3mn/d.
Saudi exports 7.0 currently and that’s restraining themselves.

~~~
rapsey
It is right up there with SA.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-12/u-s-
beats...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-12/u-s-beats-saudi-
arabia-to-become-top-oil-exporter-on-shale-boom)

~~~
fspeech
You need to look at the numbers on a net basis:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/12/09/no-the-u-
s-i...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/12/09/no-the-u-s-is-not-a-
net-exporter-of-crude-oil/#1a57e1fc4ac1)

------
thecleaner
I think Yemen war will go down in military history as one of the most
successful asymmetrical war initiative.

~~~
chappi42
Not so sucessful for (poor) normal Yemenis who have a failed state instead of
a prosperous country which could be wonderful (culture, nature, tourism), such
a shame!

~~~
thecleaner
On the dark side of things I am not sure if Yemen would ever have been too
prosperous in the long term. They are bordered by one of the worst countries
on the world. Saudi Arabia has funded acts of terror (9/11), harbored
international criminals (several of whom fled India) and is practically a
serfdom which uses Islam as its recruitment tool. On the other side is Iran
which is again super messed up. So it was basically impossible for them to be
prosperous for too long. I hope Saudi Arabia has to pay them lots of
reparation money.

------
onetimemanytime
This is fair game, Yemen is being starved, regardless of age, or guilt.

------
auslander
What drone type/size? What charge was delivered, was it FPV or pre-programmed
route? Stupid article, no details whatsoever.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I am also interested in that - but as they could not stop the drone bombing
them they did not have that data either.

however an earlier comment linked eventually to mintpressnews and a claim that
they are domestically manufacturing drones (UAV-like not consumer)

If these are domestically produced (presumably helped by Iran as opposed to
supplied) then the bar to becoming a "threat to your neighbours" just got a
lot lower - Yemen was poor before years of war.

[https://www.mintpressnews.com/uae-yemen-troop-withdrawal-
hou...](https://www.mintpressnews.com/uae-yemen-troop-withdrawal-houthi-new-
drones-missiles/260253/) (No idea about the provenance of this article, but it
says Houthi have drones, and they just bombed so it must have something going
for it)

------
aussieguy1234
It's likely that a terrorist group, sooner or later, will do some kind of
drone attack on a western target.

------
test234
This is so sad.

~~~
jayalpha
Well, it is definitely not good. But sad?

Saudi Arabia brought ugly warfare to Yemen and the war has come back.

~~~
tomohawk
The Iranians are taking over the Middle East. Iraq, Syria, Lebanon,
Palistinian areas, Yemen. The Saudis and Egyptians are countering them. The
whole area is in conflict because of the Iranian government's urge to
dominate.

Are there any good guys here? Probably not, but this attack on this refinery
is an attack on all countries that use the oil from it. We'll all end up
paying for it one way or the other.

The only way out from this is developing energy sources that do not depend on
this volatile area.

------
jk27277
This is old news. Just happed again. Saudi Arabia lost the war
[https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2019/08/19/today-saudi-arabia-
fin...](https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2019/08/19/today-saudi-arabia-finally-lost-
the-war-on-yemen/)

~~~
why-oh-why
Nice source.

> The Houthi have clown prince Mohammad bin Salman by the balls and can
> squeeze those at will.

Perhaps don’t link to propaganda blogs.

~~~
jayalpha
May I assume, based on your comment

1\. That prince Salman is a serious politician? I mean, give or take a bown
saw?

2\. That the conclusion of the former news is wrong? It looked more and more
unlikely that this war can be won by Saudi Arabia. Now it looks, it might get
lost.

By the way, the Emirates left the war already. Wonder why. If I had to take a
guess I would say that a drone attack on the Dubai airport would do wonders to
their air traffic. But you never know.

"The Houthi have clown prince Mohammad bin Salman by the balls and can squeeze
those at will."

no way. You predicted victory for Saudi Arabia.

~~~
dagw
_That prince Salman is a serious politician?_

Of course he's a serious politician, and a skilled one at that. He has managed
to greatly strengthen ties with the US, outmaneuver most of his political
'enemies', keep the flow of western weapons coming into his country and get
the entire western world to kind of shrug and forget that he had a journalist
murdered and cut up with a bone saw.

~~~
sa-mao
I wouldn't really go as far as qualifying him as a successful politician for
the simple reason that it not really challenging for dictators to consolidate
power and build alliances using unethical means, like money and intimidation
and in this case murder. For MBS his father is already the monarch of one of
the wealthiest nations on earth, which I'm pretty sure helps a lot.

