US To Send Troops To Saudi Arabia Amid Increasing Tension With Iran

The US is dispatching additional forces to Saudi Arabia following the attack on oil facilities for which Washington has blamed Iran.

A week after Saudi oil facilities at Khurai and Abqaiq were damaged in a drone attack, the Pentagon announced it would be deploying a “moderate” number of troops primarily ”defensive in nature". "The president has approved the deployment of U.S. forces which will be defensive in nature and primarily focused on air and missile defense," U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced Friday.

Esper reiterated that the United States does not seek a conflict with Iran and called on Tehran to return to diplomatic channels. He also said that there could be additional U.S. deployments if the situation were to escalate. However, total troop numbers have not yet been decided.

The news followed an announcement by President Trump that the US was imposing new sanctions on Iran. He said: "I think the sanctions work. The military would work. That's a very severe form of winning."

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels have said they were behind the attacks against two oil facilities last week. But the US and Saudi Arabia have both blamed Iran itself. The strikes on the world’s largest crude-processing plant and oil field forced the kingdom to shut down half of its production operations.