The recent missile and drone strike on a key Saudi oil facility demonstrated that US and other Western officials underestimated Iran's technical abilities, forcing a re-evaluation of Iranian military capabilities, the Soufan Group said in a report on Wednesday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th October, 2019) The recent missile and drone strike on a key Saudi oil facility demonstrated that US and other Western officials underestimated Iran's technical abilities, forcing a re-evaluation of Iranian military capabilities, the Soufan Group said in a report on Wednesday."Prior to the September 14 attack, virtually all US, Western, and regional officials were widely dismissive of Iran's claims to be capable of conducting a missile strike with that level of precision and effectiveness," the report said.
The report noted that the weapons used in the attack - Land Attack Cruise Missiles and Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles - not only struck nearly all of the 19 sites targeted but also successfully avoided the US-supplied missile defense network in Saudi Arabia and across the Persian Gulf region.
Over half of Saudi oil production was knocked offline, and Saudi officials say that they will not be back to full production until early November.
Iran's transfer of increasingly precise and capable missiles and related weaponry to its proxies, such as Houthi rebels in Yemen and Shiite militias in Iraq, earlier prompted a re-evaluation of Iran's regional reach by Israel, the report said.
Beginning in 2018 and throughout 2019, Israel struck Iranian manufacturing facilities in Syria, Hezbollah installations in Beirut and at least one Iraqi site controlled by Iranian-backed Shiite militias, according to the report.
Iran likely gained its recent technological expertise by reverse engineering and extending the range of Soviet-era cruise missiles acquired years ago, while developing its drone capabilities from a US RQ-170 Sentinel drone captured in 2011, the report said.
