Donald Trump threatened to “massively blow up” the world’s largest gasfield after Israeli strikes on the Iranian site prompted Tehran to step up attacks on energy facilities across the Middle East.
Israel’s decision to target the South Pars gasfield on Wednesday marked a major escalation of the war, heightening fears of significant disruption to international energy supplies.
Iran promptly retaliated with fresh attacks across the region, including on Qatari liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities – infuriating the US president.
Oil and European natural gas prices rose sharply, with Brent crude – the international benchmark for oil – up 6% at $114 a barrel. Gas prices jumped 23%. Leading Asian stock markets came under pressure, with the Nikkei 225 falling 3.4% in Japan.
The US “knew nothing” of the Israeli attack on South Pars, Trump claimed on social media on Wednesday night. US media reported earlier that the US was aware of the attack. The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed US officials, that the president approved of it, in a bid to pressure Tehran into unblocking the strait of Hormuz.
Authorities in Abu Dhabi said it had been forced to shut down operations at its Habshan gas facility and Bab field because of Iranian attacks that it called a “dangerous escalation” of the war.
Ras Laffan in Qatar, the site of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas hub, has now suffered “extensive damage” after strikes by Iran, the state-run QatarEnergy giant said. Early on Thursday, QatarEnergy reported “sizeable fires” and significant damage at several LNG facilities at the hub. The Qatari interior ministry later said that all fires had been contained.
The strike on South Pars amounted to the first targeted attacks on Iranian fossil fuel production since the US and Israel launched the conflict, almost three weeks ago.
Qatar, which shares the gasfield with Iran, “was in no way, shape, or form, involved with it [the attack], nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen”, Trump said, adding that Israel would not attack the gasfield again unless Iran attacked Qatari gas facilities again.
If Tehran chose to retaliate, Trump said: “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.”
Trump’s efforts to deescalate the attacks on energy infrastructure, by threatening to destroy South Pars, did not reassure global markets as concern mounts over the economic impact of the conflict.
Saudi Arabia was also targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles on Wednesday. Any trust with Tehran had been shattered, its foreign minister said. “This pressure from Iran will backfire politically and morally and certainly we reserve the right to take military actions if deemed necessary,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan told a news conference.
A spokesperson for the Qatari foreign ministry described the Israeli attack on South Pars as “dangerous” and “irresponsible”, urging all sides not to target energy facilities. The UAE foreign ministry also described the move as a “dangerous escalation”, warning: “Targeting energy infrastructure poses a direct threat to global energy security.”
The strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil supplies and seaborne gas tankers usually pass, meanwhile remains all but closed. Trump’s efforts to build a multinational naval force to reopen the key waterway have yet to bear fruit.
A fire broke out on a vessel near the strait after it was hit by a projectile, the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency said, citing a report late on Wednesday. The ship was off the coast of the UAE.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, spoke with Trump and Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, emir of Qatar, after Wednesday’s strikes on gas facilities. Calling for a moratorium on strikes targeting civilian infrastructure, Macron said: “Civilian populations and their essential needs, as well as the security of energy supplies, must be protected from military escalation.”
On another day of violence in the Middle East, the Palestinian Red Crescent said three Palestinian women were killed in an Iranian missile attack in the occupied West Bank late on Wednesday – the first deadly Iranian strike there, and the first to kill Palestinians since the start of the war.
The European Union meanwhile urged Israel to “cease its operations” in Lebanon, which French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot will visit on Thursday.
Lebanon was drawn into the crisis earlier this month, when Hezbollah fighters launched rockets at Israel. Israel retaliated with strikes that have killed at least 968 people, according to Lebanese authorities, and displaced over a million.
More than a week has passed since Trump first suggested the war could be over “very soon”. With no end in sight, some companies are bracing for at least another month of severe disruption.
The Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific suspended flights to and from Dubai and Riyadh until the end of April on Thursday, a move it attributed to “the developing situation in the Middle East”.
