Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appeared to revise his position Wednesday over recent attacks on major oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, during talks with U.S. President Donald Trump where the leaders agreed to cooperate to defuse tensions in the Middle East.
"It is difficult to think" that the pro-Iran Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen, who immediately claimed responsibility for the incident, had the ability to carry out the attacks, Abe was quoted as telling Trump as they met on the sidelines of U.N. meetings in New York.
But he also said that Japan will continue to cooperate with other related parties to gather information and analyze the attacks, which cut Saudi Arabia's oil production by about 5.7 million barrels a day — about 5 percent of global supply.