The UK now believes Iran was responsible for a major attack earlier this month on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, Boris Johnson has said, also raising the possibility that the British military could become involved in helping secure the Saudis against future aggression, The Guardian says.

Speaking to reporters on his plane en route to the UN general assembly (UNGA) in New York, the prime minister said there was “a very high degree of probability” that Iran was behind the drone and missile attack two major oil installation on 14 September.

Stressing his desire to avoid any escalation in the rumbling crisis, Johnson said he saw the UK’s role as “serving as a bridge between our European friends and the Americans” on the issue.

Speaking on the plane Johnson said one of his key objectives at UNGA was to help “bring the world together in response to what happened in Saudi Arabia, in our management of Iran”.

He said: “I can tell you that the UK is attributing responsibility with a very high degree of probability to Iran for the Aramco attacks. We think it very likely indeed that Iran was indeed responsible, using both drones and cruise missiles.

“Clearly, the difficulty is how do we organise a global response, what is the way forward. We’ll be working with our American friends and our European friends to construct a response that tries to de-escalate tensions in the Gulf region.”

Johnson went on: “On what kind of action we can take, you’ll have seen that the Americans are proposing to do more to help to defend Saudi Arabia, and we will be following that closely.

He said: “Imagery from the site of the attack shows remnants of Iranian-made ground-attack cruise missiles. The scale, sophistication and range of the attack is inconsistent with the Houthi’s capability.”