DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Any attack on Iran by the U.S. or Saudi Arabia will spark an "all-out war," Tehran's top diplomat warned Thursday, raising the stakes as Washington and Riyadh weigh a response to a drone-and-missile strike on the kingdom's oil industry that shook global energy markets.
The comments by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif represented the starkest warning yet by Iran in a summer of mysterious attacks and incidents after the collapse of Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, more than a year after President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the accord.
They appeared to be aimed directly at U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who while on a trip to the region earlier referred to Saturday's attack in Saudi Arabia as an "act of war."
But there were also signals from both sides of wanting to avoid a confrontation.
In his comments, Zarif sought to expose current strains between the Americans and the Saudis under Trump, who long has criticized U.S. wars in the Middle East.
Trump's close relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been challenged by opponents after the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi last year in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and the kingdom's long, bloody war in Yemen. That country's Houthi rebels claimed the oil field attack Saturday in Saudi Arabia, although the U.S. alleges Iran carried it out.
"I think it is important for the Saudi government to understand what they're trying to achieve. Do they want to fight Iran until the last American soldier? Is that their aim?" Zarif asked in a CNN interview. "They can be assured that this won't be the case ... because Iran will defend itself."
Asked by the broadcaster what would be the consequence of a U.S. or Saudi strike, Zarif said: "An all-out war."
"I'm making a very serious statement that we don't want war. We don't want to engage in a military confrontation," he said. "We believe that a military confrontation based on deception is awful."
Zarif, who was to travel to New York today after the U.S. granted him a visa for the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting, added: "We'll have a lot of casualties, but we won't blink to defend our territory."
Pompeo dismissed Zarif's remarks.
"We'd like a peaceful resolution, indeed," he told reporters traveling with him in the United Arab Emirates before flying back to Washington after a two-day emergency trip. "We're still striving to build out a coalition. I was here in an act of diplomacy while the foreign minister of Iran is threatening all-out war to fight to the last American."
Pompeo said the United States planned to impose more sanctions, as Trump announced Wednesday. "We have set about a course of action to deny Iran the capacity and the wealth to prevent them from conducting their terror campaigns," Pompeo said. "And you can see from the events of last week there's more work to do."
Pompeo said he hoped Iran would choose a path toward peace, but he remained doubtful. He described "an enormous consensus in the region" that Iran carried out the attack.
"There are still those today who think, 'Boy, if we just give Iran just a little bit more money they'll become a peaceful nation,'" he said. "We can see that that does not work."
Pompeo on Thursday met Abu Dhabi's powerful crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The United Arab Emirates is a close ally of Saudi Arabia and joined the kingdom in its war with the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The 4-year-old war has killed tens of thousands of people and destroyed much of the country, with millions more driven from their homes and thrown into near starvation.
On Wednesday, Pompeo met with the Saudi crown prince in Jiddah about the attack on the kingdom's crucial oil processing facility and oil field, which cut its oil production in half.
The UAE said it had joined a U.S.-led coalition to protect waterways across the Middle East after the attack in Saudi Arabia.
The state-run WAM news agency quoted Salem al-Zaabi of the United Arab Emirates Foreign Ministry as saying the UAE joined the coalition to "ensure global energy security and the continued flow of energy supplies to the global economy."
Saudi Arabia joined the coalition Wednesday. Australia, Bahrain and the United Kingdom also are taking part.
The U.S. formed the coalition after attacks on oil tankers that Washington blamed on Tehran, as well as Iran's seizure of tankers in the region. Iran denies being behind the tanker explosions, although the attacks came after Tehran threatened to stop oil exports from the Persian Gulf.
Iraq said it would not join the coalition. The government in Baghdad, which is allied with both Iran and the U.S., has tried to keep a neutral stance during the tensions.
At a news conference Wednesday, the Saudis displayed broken and burned drones and pieces of a cruise missile that military spokesman Col. Turki Al-Maliki identified as Iranian weapons collected after the attack. He also played surveillance video that he said showed a drone flying in from the north. Yemen is to the south of Saudi Arabia.
Eighteen drones and seven cruise missiles were launched in the assault, Al-Maliki said, with three missiles failing to hit their targets. He said the cruise missiles had a range of 435 miles, meaning they could not have been fired from inside Yemen.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian similarly was skeptical of the Houthi claim of responsibility.
"This is not very credible, relatively speaking," he told CNews television. "But we sent our experts to have our own vision of things."
TRUMP AMBIVALENT
While Pompeo struck a hard line, Trump has been noncommittal on whether he would order U.S. military retaliation.
He has threatened to order "the ultimate option" of a strike on Iran to punish the nation for its behavior, but also has made clear his continued opposition to ordering the United States into another war in the Middle East.
Senior national security officials from across the government were scheduled to meet Thursday to refine a list of potential targets to strike in Iran, should Trump order a military retaliation for last weekend's attack, officials said.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are to present the updated options to Trump at a National Security Council meeting scheduled for today, a senior U.S. official said.
The Pentagon is advocating military strikes that one senior official described as at the lower end of options. The official said that any retaliation could focus on more clandestine operations -- actions that military planners predict would not prompt an escalation by Iran.
These kinds of targets could include the sites where Iran launches cruise missiles and drones, and where the weaponry is stored. Under this scenario, the military option would include a diplomatic outreach campaign at the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week to muster support for the additional sanctions that Trump has ordered and other nonmilitary steps. A range of covert cyberoperations also is being discussed.
But the senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, warned that Trump would also be presented with other options that are stronger, options that would require dispatching more forces to the Persian Gulf region.
The official offered no details on those targets, but presumably they could include Iranian oil facilities or targets involving Iran's Revolutionary Guard.
Information for this article was contributed by Jon Gambrell, David Rising, Angela Charlton, Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Edith M. Lederer of The Associated Press; and by Eric Schmitt, Edward Wong and Richard Perez-Pena of The New York Times.
A Section on 09/20/2019