President Donald Trump appeared to tweet a threat Sunday to Iran over drone attacks Saturday by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels against oil fields in Saudi Arabia that were reported to have cut global oil production by 5 percent.
Trump tweeted:
The president also tweeted earlier that he had authorized the release of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, “if necessary,” to counteract the effect of the Houthi strikes on global oil markets.
In June, President Trump called off an airstrike against Iran in retaliation for the downing of an American drone in international waters. Trump tweeted on that occasion that the U.S. had been “cocked & loaded” before he decided the cost in civilian casualties would not be worth the effort.
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a pro-Iran lobby group, blamed the United States, indirectly, for the strikes on Saudi Arabia, saying in a statement Sunday that while Iran might have been responsible, it had a clear “motive, given the economic warfare being waged against it.” NIAC discouraged any military strike on Iran, which it suggested would lead to a worse “catastrophe” than the Iraq War, and suggested that the world “offer economic relief in exchange for Iranian restraint.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.