https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6578684554444365824/ :
Apart from the damage in the Abqaiq attack, the big question is how the US/Trump will respond? Whether this was launched by the Houthis or from Iraq like one attack in May, this is Iranian-made hardware attacking a major artery of the world economy, not just Saudi Arabia. It is an odd time for escalation, with Bolton's departure having been seen positively in Iran. This will definitely cast a pall over Macron efforts to open US-Iran talks.
It is not yet clear exactly what was damaged in the drone attack at Abqaiq (and the Khurais oilfield) -- there is redundancy built into the key facilities at Abqaiq, and some of the infrastructure which does not have redundancy is physically hardened against attack. Some of the dramatic fire scenes in video circulating on social media seems to be emergency flaring, after the fires were under control. So this could be a brief outage, but we do not know at this point.
Also underscores two points I've made for a long time 1) proliferation of precision guided munitions makes these facilities more vulnerable, 2) US Strategic Petroleum Reserve is still needed.
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