U.S. President Donald Trump declared Monday it “looks” like Iran was behind the explosive attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities. But he stressed that military retaliation was not yet on the table in response to the strike against a key U.S. Mideast ally.

“Fox & Friends,” a regular source of information for Trump, discussed the incident with co-host Brian Kilmeade saying “I think this cannot go without retribution.”

“They have provoked us before,” co-host Steve Doocy added. “Think about the tankers they have seized, they shot one of our drones out of the sky, and now it looks like this, even though the Houthi rebels are saying, ‘Oh we did it, 100%.’ Yeah, right.”

“The drone attacks, extremely disturbing from a security standpoint: What stops it from happening here?” Kilmeade added. “We have to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, and we’ve got to protect the world’s oil supply.”

Oil prices soared worldwide amid the damage in Saudi Arabia and fresh Middle East war concerns. But Trump put the brakes on any talk of quick military action — earlier he had said the U.S. was “locked and loaded” — and he said the oil impact would not be significant on the U.S., which is a net energy exporter.

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Democratic Senator Chris Coons, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Fox News Monday, “This may well be the thing that calls for military action against Iran if that’s what the intelligence supports.” He added that, “I want to see the intelligence, but it seems credible that the Houthis don’t have the sort of advanced drones that carried out this crippling strike on Saudi oil facilities.”

Another Fox News segment hosted by George W Bush’s former press secretary Dana Perino included a discussion of whether or not Trump needs Congressional approval to strike Iran. Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen argued, “No, he does not need to go to Congress ... If there is an attack on a U.S. ally, he has the authority to go ahead and do that.”

A top White House official is downplaying the threat of imminent action against Iran after President Donald Trump said the U.S. is “locked and loaded” following a drone attack on Saudi Arabia that cut into global energy supplies.

Vice President Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff Marc Short told reporters at the White House Monday that the president’s language is “a reflection” that his administration is advancing policies that protect the U.S. “from these sorts of oil shots.”

Short says: “I think that ‘locked and loaded’ is a broad term that talks about the realities that” the U.S. is “safer and more secure domestically from energy independence.”