If the Houthi claims of responsibility are to be denied, then there is the possibility that “the attacks on the Saudi oil facilities are a clandestine ‘false flag’ operation similar to the Gulf of Tonkin incident that sparked the escalation of the Vietnam War,” according to Dennis Etler, an American political analyst who has a decades-long interest in international affairs.

Etler, a retired professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Monday following the attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil facilities on Saturday that knocked out more than half the kingdom’s production.

Yemen's Houthi fighters have claimed responsibility for the attack on two Saudi Aramco oil facilities, but the United States has rejected their claim and President Donald Trump has said that Iran appeared to be responsible for the strike.

Following a briefing from his military and intelligence advisers at the White House on Monday, Trump was asked whether Iran was behind the attack, Trump said, "It's certainly looking that way at this moment and we'll let you know. As soon as we find out definitively we'll let you know but it does look that way."

A day earlier, Trump said the United States was “locked and loaded” for a possible response to the attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil facilities.

On Saturday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said the US should mull bombing Iranian oil refineries if Tehran continues boosting its nuclear enrichment to higher grades.

“It is now time for the US to put on the table an attack on Iranian oil refineries if they continue their provocations or increase nuclear enrichment,” the war-mongering senator from South Carolina said.

Commenting on all these developments, Professor Etler said, “The departure of war-hawk John Bolton as US National Security Adviser has had a negligible impact on the crisis in the Persian Gulf region. Events are proceeding, irrespective of the political turmoil in the US, in a fashion determined by multiple factors.”

“The proximate cause of the attack is the war in Yemen. The genocidal Saudi war of aggression against the Yemeni people, fully backed by the US and UK, has devastated that country and killed and maimed tens of thousands. The Houthi resistance against Saudi aggression has claimed responsibility for the attack as retaliation for Saudi imperialist depredations. The Saudis and their allies must accept the attack as part of the war they initiated and have pursued with unrelenting force,” he stated.

“The US has also set the stage for attacks on Saudi targets by waging an illegal and unjustified economic war of attrition against Iran. The inability of the EU to restrain US aggression and support Iran has led to the current instability in the Persian Gulf,” he stated.

“No matter how you cut it the reason for the deterioration of conditions and destabilization in the region is due to the actions of the US and its Saudi surrogates. In the wings are also the Israelis and their lackeys in the US Senate such as war-mongering Sen. Lindsay Graham who have been itching for an excuse to attack Iranian oil facilities, raising the possibility that the attacks on the Saudi oil facilities are a clandestine ‘false flag’ operation similar to the Gulf of Tonkin incident that sparked the escalation of the Vietnam War, the Incubator Hoax, that helped justify the (Persian) Gulf War and the WMD accusations that led to the US invasion of Iraq,” he noted.

“The attack on the Saudi oil fields also illustrates severe deficiencies in the US/Saudi defense posture. Given the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on ‘defense’ by the Saudi regime how can the ease of the recent attack be explained? If the Saudi defense is so impregnable, how could the attack have been so easily mounted? The only conclusion is that if full-scale hostilities erupt in the region the Saudi position will be indefensible and lead to its collapse,” he said.

“The entire Middle East is on the brink of destruction. A full-scale military confrontation between the contending forces in the Middle East will have unimaginable consequences for the world economy and could easily escalate into a global conflict. It is up to the US, the instigator of this imminent catastrophe, to rethink its behavior and seek a way out of the cul-de-sac it has found itself in. It is US policy that has led to the current situation and only a change in it that will allow for its resolution,” the scholar concluded.