U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to “massively blow up” the world’s largest natural gas field if Iran’s retaliation against Israel’s strikes don’t stop.
Trump said that Israel wouldn’t attack South Pars again, but warned on social media that if Iran continued striking Qatar’s energy infrastructure, the U.S. would retaliate and “massively blow up everything” of the sphere.
“I don’t need to authorize this level of violence and destruction due to long run implications that it’ll have on the longer term of Iran,” Trump said on social media.
Iran intensified its attacks on oil and gas facilities across the Gulf on Thursday, dramatically raising the stakes in a war that’s sending shock waves through the worldwide economy.
The strikes, in retaliation for an Israeli attack on a key Iranian gas field, sent fuel prices soaring and risked drawing Iran’s Arab neighbours directly into the conflict. Tehran’s targeting of energy production further stressed global supply already under pressure due to Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil is transported.
Underscoring the danger to ships within the region, a vessel was set ablaze off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and one other damaged off Qatar. But efforts to bypass the strait were also under pressure: An Iranian drone hit a Saudi refinery on the Red Sea, which the country had been hoping to make use of as a substitute exit route.
Brent crude oil, the international standard, spiked to as high as US$118 a barrel, up greater than 60 per cent since Israel and the US began the war Feb. 28 with strikes on Iran.
Energy infrastructure targeted
Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE denounced the Iranian attacks. Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit called them a “dangerous escalation.”
But Iran showed no signs of backing down. Saudi Arabia intercepted six drones in Riyadh and its Eastern province before saying that the SAMREF refinery within the Red Sea port city of Yanbu was hit.
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Saudi Arabia had begun pumping large volumes of oil west toward the Red Sea to avoid the Strait of Hormuz. The Saudi Defense Ministry and Shell said damage assessment was underway at the power.
Qatar, a key source of natural gas for world markets, said firefighters put out a blaze on the Ras Laffan LNG facility after it was hit by Iranian missiles. Production had already been halted there after earlier attacks. The state-owned QatarEnergy said the hearth had caused “extensive” damage, and energy giant Shell said it was assessing it.
Ras Laffan is the biggest liquefied natural gas export facility on the earth, in keeping with QatarEnergy. Damage to the power could delay Qatar’s ability to get supplies to the market even after the war ends.
A drone attack on Kuwait’s Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery sparked a hearth but caused no injuries, the state-run KUNA news agency reported. The refinery is one among the largest within the Middle East. Shortly after, a drone attack set ablaze the nearby Mina Abdullah refinery, officials said.
Authorities in Abu Dhabi said they were forced to shut down operations at its Habshan gas facility and Bab field, calling Iranian overnight attacks on the sites a “dangerous escalation.”
In Israel, greater than a half-dozen waves of Iranian attacks targeting large parts of the country sent tens of millions of individuals to shelters. The strikes caused damage to buildings but no significant casualties were reported.
Iran’s strikes were retaliation
The Iranian attacks got here after Israel hit South Pars, the Iranian a part of the world’s largest gas field positioned offshore within the Persian Gulf and owned jointly with Qatar.
With some 80 per cent of all power generated in Iran coming from natural gas, in keeping with the Paris-based International Energy Agency, the attack directly threatens the country’s electricity supplies. Natural gas can be used to provide household heating and cooking across the Islamic Republic.
Hitting the gas field is a “clear expansion of the conflict,” the Recent York-based Soufan Center said in a research note.
“Israel’s goal selection on this war has heavily focused on the institutions, leaders and infrastructure,” the think tank said. “It now seeks to inflict additional pressure on the regime by making the living conditions for civilians intolerable.”
Iran condemned the strike on South Pars, with President Masoud Pezeshkian warning of “uncontrollable consequences” that “could engulf the complete world.”
Iran announced the execution of three men detained in January’s nationwide protests, the primary such sentences known to have been carried out, the judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported.
The lads were accused of stabbing two law enforcement officials to death in Qom, some 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of the capital, Tehran, in the course of the protests.
Iran put down the demonstrations with intense violence that killed 1000’s of individuals and saw tens of 1000’s others detained, and activists have warned that authorities might perform mass executions of those detained.
Iran long has been accused by rights campaigners of extracting coerced confessions from detainees and never allowing them to completely defend themselves in court.
Greater than 1,300 people in Iran have been killed in the course of the war. Israeli strikes against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon have displaced greater than 1 million people — roughly 20 per cent of the population — in keeping with the Lebanese government, which says greater than 900 people have been killed.
In Israel, 15 people have been killed by Iranian missile fire. 4 people were also killed within the occupied West Bank overnight by an Iranian missile strike, in keeping with officials.
Not less than 13 U.S. military members have been killed.
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