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Senior U.S. official says missiles fired on Saudi oil plant were launched from Iran

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U.S. intelligence traces the missiles and drones that hit Saudi Arabia’s largest oil facility straight back to Iranian soil.

A senior U.S. official told CBS News on Tuesday that American intelligence has determined the cruise missiles and drones that struck Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq processing plant and the Khurais oilfield on September 14 were launched from Iran, not Yemen. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin, reporting from the Pentagon, laid out how officials pinpointed the launch sites and why Saudi defenses never saw the attack coming. The finding lands just as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo heads to Jeddah to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

• U.S. officials identified launch sites in southern Iran, near the northern end of the Persian Gulf — not Yemen, as the Houthi rebels initially claimed.
• The strike knocked out 5.7 million barrels of daily crude production, about half of Saudi Arabia’s output and roughly 5% of global supply.
• Pompeo departed for Saudi Arabia on September 17-18 to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, calling the strike an “act of war.”

Trajectory Reveals The Underlying Intent

Martin explained that the low-flying missiles and drones came in on a north-to-northwest trajectory, slipping beneath Saudi radar coverage that was built to watch the southern border with Yemen, where the Houthis have launched drone and missile attacks for years. That geometry is the whole case: a strike aimed from Yemen would have come from the south, not from across the Gulf. Satellite imagery of the impact points, combined with the weapons’ range limitations, led U.S. analysts to rule out a Yemen-based launch entirely.

The Houthis claimed credit for the attack within hours, a claim Riyadh and Washington have effectively dismissed. Between the flight paths, the imagery and the sheer distance the weapons would have needed to travel from Houthi-held territory, U.S. assessments point instead to firing positions in southern Iran, at the northern tip of the Persian Gulf.

Half the Kingdom’s Output, Gone Overnight

The scale of the damage is what makes this more than a regional skirmish. Abqaiq is the largest crude processing facility in the world, and the combined hit on it and the Khurais field erased 5.7 million barrels a day — about half of Saudi Arabia’s production and close to 5% of the oil pumped globally each day. That’s the kind of number that moves markets instantly and explains why Washington and Riyadh are treating this as a strategic emergency rather than a one-off.

Officials say the low-flying missiles and drones bypassed Saudi air defenses because those systems were oriented south, toward Yemen — not north, toward Iran.

Tehran’s Denial Versus Washington’s Read

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and other officials in Tehran have repeatedly denied any role in the strike, warning that pinning it on Iran risks inflaming an already volatile region. That denial hasn’t moved U.S. assessments, which rest on the satellite imagery, the missiles’ range, and impact angles at both facilities that all point north, back toward Iranian territory rather than Houthi-controlled Yemen.

That gap between Tehran’s public position and Washington’s intelligence is now the central diplomatic problem. Pompeo labeled the strike an “act of war” ahead of his Jeddah meeting with the crown prince, and the two governments are weighing military, diplomatic and economic options in response — a decision that hinges almost entirely on whether the rest of the world accepts the U.S. reading of where those missiles actually came from.

Pompeo’s sit-down with Mohammed bin Salman is where the next move gets decided, and it’s happening fast — barely 72 hours after the strike knocked out half of Saudi production. Whatever Riyadh and Washington settle on, the number that matters most right now is 5.7 million barrels a day, still not flowing.