Saudi oil fields on fire, but who did it?

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by mapuc

After having read Platapus comment a thought I never have thought of before popped up

Could it be an inside job ?

To get the war between USA and Iran started ?

Or is my imagination running away with me again ?

Markus

In my line of work we have a saying

Cui Bono Fuisset?

"to whom might it be for a benefit?

When analyzing instances, like this, we always ask this question. Whenever we are evaluating possible responses, we ask this question.

That was the basis of my post. Who benefits from this target being hit at this time?

With the information that is available, I am not seeing a benefit to Iran. Additional information may change that, of course.


As for your post?

An inside job? Doubtful. There would have to be a considerable benefit before the Saudi's would damage this facility. I can't see that happening. There is no benefit for the Saudi's at this time.

No one is going to benefit from a war between Iran and the US. Not even the fringe groups. They operate better in Low Intensity Conflicts.

The only entities that would benefit from this war would be parties not involved like China or perhaps Russia. It is unknown whether Russia will get involved in operation in Iran at this time.

Trump may have fantasies of being a "war time president" in hope that this will help his re-election, but not even Trump wants a war in the ME.

Of course, we have to consider the possibility that Trump will react emotionally and rashly to this.

If a third party wants to start a war between Iran and the US, there are easier and better targets to attack to force a war. One with a lot more public deaths for example.

Absent of contrary information, a good safe assumption is to go with the hypothesis that has the fewer assumptions, making sure that our biases don't taint our analysis.

But we should always consider alternative hypotheses. There is even a methodology that we use called Analysis of Competing Hypotheses of which I am a big fan.

What we have a lot of is not enough information about this incident. We can speculate and the issue is ripe for confirmation biases. I don't think that any action should be taken until we have more information.

This attack, does not require an immediate reaction and certainly not an immediate reaction on the part of the US. The Saudi's may have a different opinion, but we should let the Saudi's make their own decisions but not make our decision.

We should not let who ever attacked that facility or the Saudi's to push the US into taking any action with careful thought.

I really wish that both houses would get together and rescind the current AUMF. It is far too vague and open ended for safety. Congress then should resolve to only vote for very specific AUMFs and any future AUMFs should have a positive end date. Any renewal of a AUMF should require a positive vote in the Congress.

Justification for AUMFs should be so patent that getting congress to renew it should be clear and straightforward.