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\"The president has made it clear he is not looking to go to war,\" Dunford said Tuesday. \"Having said that, what we saw was an unacceptable act of aggression. There are a number of ways to deal with that.\"

In a speech at the Heritage Foundation in Washington on Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence echoed that sentiment, but added that the U.S. is \"prepared\" to respond.

\"We're locked and loaded,\" Pence said, echoing the president. \"We're ready to defend our interests and our allies in the region, make no mistake about it.\"

President Trump says it looks like Iran was behind this weekend's attack on oil fields in Saudi Arabia, but he has backed away from what seemed to be a threat of an imminent U.S. response.

ABC News' @karentravers reports https://t.co/QBvrNps23p pic.twitter.com/DZ6js1yFe7

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) September 17, 2019

Despite the high tensions in the aftermath of the Saudi oil facilities attack, the Trump administration doesn't fear a wider conflict and believes Iran will \"come back down.\"

\"Iran has a long history of testing its strength. But they never climb too high up the escalation ladder. At a certain point, when the world says enough, they come back down,\" a senior administration official told ABC News on Tuesday.

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