Questions raised over US knowledge of Israeli plans to strike key Iranian gasfield as Gulf region’s energy infrastructure becomes target for attack.
United States President Donald Trump has tried to distance the US from Israel’s attack on Iran’s South Pars gasfield, describing his Israeli allies as having “violently lashed out” at the facility and promising that it would not reoccur if Tehran refrains from attacking Qatar.
Trump said the US had “nothing to do” with the strike on the offshore gasfield facilities in Iran’s Bushehr province on Wednesday, which was followed by Iran pledging to strike energy facilities in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
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Qatar’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility at Ras Laffan Industrial City later sustained “significant damage” in an Iranian missile strike, while the UAE suspended operations of the Habshan gas facility and the Bab oilfield amid missile attacks.
“NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars Field,” Trump said on his TruthSocial platform late on Wednesday.
“Unless Iran unwisely decides to attack a very innocent, in this case, Qatar – in which instance the United States of America, with or without the help or consent of Israel, will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before,” he said.
“The United States knew nothing about this particular attack, and the country of Qatar was in no way, shape, or form, involved with it, nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen,” Trump said.
Earlier on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had approved of Israel’s plan to attack South Pars, which is the Iranian sector of the world’s largest natural gas deposit, and which Iran shares with Qatar.
“Trump, who knew about the Israeli strike on South Pars in advance, supported it as a message to Tehran over its block of the Strait of Hormuz,” the Journal said, citing US officials.
“The president believes Iran got the message and is now against attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure,” it said.
Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan, reporting from Washington, DC, said the strike on the gasfield – one of Iran’s key economic engines – raises serious questions.
“This raises some questions about whether the Israelis did tell the US that they were planning to attack South Pars before the attack on Wednesday,” Jordan said.
The strike on South Pars marked the first time in the current conflict that a site directly linked to fossil fuel production had been targeted, rather than broader oil and gas infrastructure.
Analysts had suggested such facilities had been spared attack up to now to limit the risk of retaliatory strikes on such facilities across the region.
The latest escalation has fuelled concerns that the conflict is expanding into the energy sector, with potentially far-reaching economic consequences globally.
