Fujairah Oil Tanker Blasts Consequence of Playing With Fire

By: Kayhan Int’l 

"Those living in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones”, runs an old English adage, which continues to hold true in the modern age when towering skyscrapers of steel and concrete are coming up everywhere and large ocean liners transport on the high seas with relative ease such highly combustible substances as oil.

In our bizarre world where might is considered right, those who play with fire by toying with technology including state-of-the-art military hardware to rain down death and destruction on those considered weak, or try to scare iron-willed nations into submission, the above-mentioned adage may seem outdated.

Yet, it is not, as has been proven time and again in Palestine, whose defenders, whenever the Zionist usurpers of their homeland attempt to test new weapons upon them, retaliate with such fury with their constantly improvised rocket volleys that makes Israel sue for peace in a day or two.

Unfortunately, the oil-rich Arab regimes of our region, who live in glasshouses, are not so smart, and as a consequence they suffer greater devastation and higher loss of life for their blind bombardment of the supposedly weak.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE, two miserably wealthy British-created fiefdoms, have for the past five years bombing the Arab world’s poorest country Yemen with billions of dollars of sophisticated weapons bought from the US and West Europe, but have failed to subdue the indomitable spirit of the popular Ansarallah Movement, whose improvised arsenal of drones and missiles continue to take a heavy toll of the aggressors in both men and material.

The projectiles from Yemen have on several occasions zoomed in on industrial installations in Riyadh, Najran, Jizan, the giant oil refinery Aramco in Dhahran, as well as on military bases and airports of the Emirati cites of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, causing extensive damage. 

The other day, the UAE port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman and outside the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf was rocked by a series of huge explosions lasting several hours in the early morning hours.

According to reliable reports, at least 7 to 10 oil tankers, loaded with petroleum flowing through the pipeline from Abu Dhabi, were completely burnt.

Eyewitness accounts said firefighters were trying to extinguish the huge flames on Sunday, while American and French warplanes were seen flying over the port at the time of the incident.

Though the small sheikhdom of Fujairah, which is part of the 7-emirate UAE Confederation, tried to deny the media reports about several heavy explosions, insisting that the port is functioning as usual, there are no reliable reports to suggest that everything is normal.

The cause of the explosions has also been not ascertained. No one has yet claimed responsibility, while speculations range from drone or missile attacks from Yemen, to possible dropping of bombs by the intruding US forces, which are looking for pretexts to ignite tensions in the region.

Nevertheless, reports said, oil exports have been temporarily halted from the UAE, which is building the world’s largest crude oil storage facility in Fujairah, capable of storing up to 14 million barrels of oil, outside the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

Whatever the cause of the explosions and the possibility of forces behind it, the fact cannot be ignored that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are sitting ducks for such attacks which might increase in view of the dangerous policies of these two American client states in terrorizing their own populations and neighbours on behalf of their masters.