Secretary Pompey is made clear that the Irani regime is responsible for this attack on civilian areas and infrastructure vital to our global energy supply, and we're not going to stand for that. Over the weekend, it would appear that Iran attacked Saudi Arabia's oil supply or their ability to supply oil to the world. According to The Wall Street Journal, US officials said yesterday, there are strong indications the blasts or the result of cruise missile strikes launched from Iraq
or Iran. You heard drones all weekend. Their cruise missiles intermediate range ballistic missiles with the potential to fly more than a thousand miles. Mike Clients is a military analyst for CBS News who has covered a conflict all over the world and indeed served in the United States Army and joins US now. Mike, welcome, How are you guys? So great to be back with you. Listen. Uh, we engage in hyperbole for fun, but during serious times we like to have a grasp of of, you know, the
seriousness of these things for real. How how big a deal is this attack counts out of Arabia? Yeah, big, because of the impact of it. It's drive driven the price of oil now down to where it was back I think the levels of desert shield desert storms started. UM. So it got the Iranian effect of impacting the market, which is what their goal is, to drive up the
price of crude. So anything that they they're exporting, because there's been the de facto embargo on Iranian oil through most of the world, but what they can sell, they just want to get more for it. So it fits in with the Iranian strategy for what they did. Now again this is complex military operation. I mean to think that the Hoofies have done this is you know, being on the pale, there's just no way to have any kind of capability to fry literally anything six and fifty
seven hundred miles from where they are to hit. UM precisely hit in aramical facility in Saud Arabia. So so clearly the US has gotta come on board really quick with UM this evidence that's coming from Iran to get the whole world against them. What do you expected the response from Saudi Arabia to be and will it include US or MBZ with the U A E. If you don't mind me thrown around all these letters in Israel and whoever else. Yeah, I know what, we gotta stay
out of this. I know the President tweeted about being locked in looaded that that probably wasn't helpful. Um, this is somewhat if you know, any kind of let's say, kinetic response. If they're going to go that direction, we've we've got to step back from that. I think that will escalate things very quickly. Salrabia, though, is embarrassed today.
You know two key numbers, right, six hundred or sixty sixty eight billion dollars what they spend on defense and a hundred and fifty grand is what the cost of the drones were. That that took that facility out for degraded at the way it did so. Um, you know, this is a kind of new warfare with the technology, the battery technology, with the GPS technology that critical limits has gotta be careful for. But the sali Arabia needs to do the same that the US share intelligence show
where they think it came from. It's going to probably show capability gaps in a lot of their systems, and I think that's why they're going to be embarrassed, which is probably why they're holding back on it as well. No, Mike, just to clarify their reports out today that their cruise missiles. Do you think it was that's not correct? Yeah, Well, so we're defining, you know, kind of what the drone is versus a cruise missile. Right. So drones are normally however,
they stay, they're more collection. They you know, they're not necessarily used as a as a targeting facility, or don't they don't fire kind of depending what we're kind of mixing the vernaculars above. Christmas is clearly you know, fire have deep range, uh that we're trying to you know, keep them in under a treaty all those kinds of things. Drones, you know, kind of stay on station. They they're serve used for surveillance. There's no way they were drones. These
are clearly weapons. You can call them cruise missiles. The fact that they went that far again and having the GPS capability means that they were likely more missiles than they were drones. We're talking with military analyst Miclines, who we've talked to over the years and really appreciate his
opinion on things. If Saudi Arabia and Iran went to an actual war war, not a proxy war, but they're actually at war with each other, which from what I understand from my reading MBS, the leader of Saudi Arabian NBZ, the leader of you A want they want to take out iran Um. What are the um capabilities of each of these countries? I mean, who would come out on top on that? Well, probably not Um. And I'd say the first question is where does that war take place
on the sky and what happens? And because you've got a country that sits in between them, and that's a rock. So in all likelihood, if it's anything that happens on the ground, it happens in a rock on the southern part of Iraq, which has been pro iran Um. If the Iranians are able to marshal Um Iraqi forces to go along with them, then things would escalate quickly because the Salatis would be looking for another partner themselves that Jordanians perhaps Um, and you'd have full scale you know war,
the regional war I guess you'd call. It wouldn't be world war just yet as well, you know, the US to get involved with that would be crazy because now if the IT gets involved, now you bring in Russia, you bring in China, you bring all these other elements of it. So I think that that the Iranians would have the upper hand if they decided to do that, based on the amount of resources they could get together
in that region. Plus the Saudist think that they would win because they would just kind of find an air war and they think the terms would win it. I don't know if that's a good enough of a gamble to lose your country over. I wonder what a non kinetic response would look like. Um. I mean, the sanctions are already pretty harsh. Might the world unite on a military naval blockade of or any imports or anything like that.
Of course that would turn into shooting pretty quick. Yeah, and and and again any kind of conflict there would upset the global markets and effects. You know, you have a worldwide recession likely if um, if there was a kind of shooting war there, because both Saudian and the Iranians would like they have to pay pair back and a lot of their production. Hopefully the United States could say somewhat stealed from it based on having a more resilient economy now based on our energy what we've done
here in the past ten or fifteen years. So but but again, um, you look at that part of the world, there's going to be a conflict at some point. The question is where it happens, how it happens. I still believe that the Iranians would try first, cyber first, or these kinds of things, attacking critical infrastructure, going after them first. Interesting. Mike Clients, military analysts for CBS News. Mike, thanks a million, good to talk to you, Thanks for having me. Thanks