On Monday, the Trump White House appeared to compare the recent drone strikes on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, which did not result in any reported fatalities, to the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that left nearly 3,000 dead. After Donald Trump stirred outrage over the weekend for suggesting that he was awaiting marching orders from Mohammed bin Salman, the administration phoned Congress to brief lawmakers on the matter. During the call, Brian Hook, the administration’s special representative for Iran, reportedly told Capitol Hill staffers that Saudi Arabia—the country that produced the vast majority of terrorists who attacked the United States on 9/11—views said drone strike as “their 9/11.”
To be sure, the analogy didn’t come from Trump himself, and it wasn’t clear if Hook actually endorsed the comparison. But referencing it nevertheless “rankled” several staffers, according to the Washington Post, and may be an attempt by the administration to add further gravity to the attacks that the administration could use to justify military action against Iran.
To liken any attack that didn’t result in any fatalities to 9/11, of course, would be sure to raise eyebrows. But such an analogy is especially rich coming from Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were citizens. The United States has had a long, complicated relationship with the House of Saud, but the uneasy friendship has found itself under a harsher light during the Trump era; the president sided with the regime in the grisly extrajudicial killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and has tacked close to the kingdom as he escalates tensions with Iran, which he’s suggested is to blame for the Saudi oil attacks. In a stunning tweet over the weekend, Trump said he is “waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed”—implying that he would be at Riyadh’s command. “You don’t ask Saudi Arabia about how to proceed,” Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, tweeted Sunday. “You ask Congress.”
“You do not have the authority to attack any other country on behalf of Saudi Arabia without getting permission first from Congress,” Gallego added.
Hook, an adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, has been floated as a possible replacement for John Bolton—the ousted national security adviser who’d advocated for a first strike against Iran. Both Hook and Pompeo have also supported increased pressure, including through the possible use of the military, on Tehran. Bullying our way into another Middle East conflict may not seem like a very good idea, but the president is not exactly known for his good sense; according to the Daily Beast, Trump himself was briefed on the 9/11 analogy and was “unmoved” by the faulty comparison.
