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Trump administration officials have claimed that intelligence assessments indicate that Iran was likely responsible for Saturday's attack on two major oil fields in Saudi Arabia that put global markets in chaos.
In briefings to news organizations on Sunday, officials provided evidence in a bid to substantiate Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's accusation Saturday that the attack on Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq and Khurais facilities was committed by Iran.
The Abqaiq facility is located in the Buqyaq region in the east of the country, about 60 km from the nearest town. It's one of the most important oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, and the attack halved the kingdom's oil output, causing a spike in prices.
This image, declassified by the U.S. government Sunday, shows the oil facility in Abqaiq in January, before the attacks.
Officials say that the direction of the attacks, which can be seen in the image, substantiates their accusation against Iran.
The areas in white boxes are those which were hit in the attack.
This image shows the damage after Saturday's attack, where U.S. officials say there were 17 points of impact on infrastructure at the facility.
These before-and-after images show damage to the oil facility in Khurais, about 200 km southwest of Abqaiq.
Houthi militias in Yemen have claimed responsibility for the attack, which they claim they launched using a fleet of drones.
However, U.S. officials told the New York Times that the attacks likely came from the north or northwest, which they say the images support. This thesis suggests that the attacks were launched from Iran or Iraq, rather than Yemen, which is southwest of the facilities.
Iran has denied any responsibility for the attacks, but experts say that Iran frequently carries out attacks using proxies in order to maintain plausible deniability.
In a background briefing, U.S. officials told the Times that that both drones and cruise missiles were used in the attack, with the scope, precision and sophistication of the attack likely beyond the capacity of Yemen's Houthi.
A senior administration official told ABC News that Iran launched 12 cruise missiles and 20 drones from its territory in the attack on the facilities.
Officials also said that some of the weapons used in the attack failed to reach their target, and that analysis of them would yield more clues about who was likely responsible.
Experts are calling for the U.S. government to release more images for independent experts to analyze and assess the accuracy of U.S. claims.
President Trump in a tweet Sunday said the U.S. was "locked and loaded" in response to the attack, but declined to name Iran as the culprit.
Read more from Business Insider:
- Everything we know about the drone attacks on 2 Saudi Aramco oil facilities
- The Saudi drone attack took out a known weak spot in the oil supply chain with a cheap, low-tech weapon that billions' worth of air defenses are powerless to stop
- Satellite photos show the scale of destruction at Saudi oil facilities hit by attacks that put global markets in chaos
- Tulsi Gabbard says Trump is making the U.S. 'Saudi Arabia's b----' with his response to the oil field attacks
- A former Google engineer warned that robot weapons could cause accidental mass killings
