Iran was likely behind attack on Saudi oil facilities, Trump said

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that Iran was likely behind strikes on Saudi oil facilities, but that he wanted to be sure and he hoped to avoid war.

“It is certainly looking that way at this moment,” Trump told reporters when asked if he believes Tehran carried out the attack.

The president said “we pretty much already know” and “certainly it would look to most like it was Iran” but that Washington still wanted more proof.

“We want to find definitively who did this,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, where he was meeting with Bahrain’s Crown Prince Salman Bin Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa.

“You’re going to find out in great detail in the near future,” he said. “We have the exact location of just about everything.

“With all that being said, we’d certainly like to avoid” war, Trump said.

“I don’t want war with anybody but we’re prepared more than anybody,” he added.

The weapons used to strike Saudi oil facilities were Iranian-made, the Riyadh-led coalition said on Monday, heightening fears of regional conflict after the US hinted at a military response to the assault.

The weekend strikes on Abqaiq — the world’s largest oil processing facility — and the Khurais oil field in eastern Saudi Arabia have roiled global energy markets sending prices spiking Monday.

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the strikes but Washington has squarely blamed Iran, with President Donald Trump saying the US is “locked and loaded” to respond.

Saudi’s energy infrastructure has been hit before, but this strike was of a different order, abruptly halting 5.7 million barrels per day (bpd) or about six percent of the world’s oil supply.

The Saudi-led coalition, which is bogged down in a five-year war in neighbouring Yemen, reiterated the assessment that the Houthis were not behind it, pointing the finger at Iran for providing the weapons.

Russia urged “all countries to avoid hasty steps or conclusions that could exacerbate the situation” while the European Union stressed all sides should show “maximum restraint”.

China also called on the US and Iran to “exercise restraint… in the absence of a conclusive investigation or verdict.”

“All indications are that weapons used in both attacks came from Iran,” coalition spokesman Turki Al-Maliki told reporters in Riyadh, adding they were now probing “from where they were fired”.

“This strike didn’t come from Yemen territory as the Houthi militia are pretending,” Maliki said, adding an investigation had been opened.