President Donald Trump has threatened to destroy Iran’s South Pars gas field if Tehran attacks Qatar again, escalating tensions after Israel struck the Iranian facility and Iran retaliated by hitting Qatar’s liquefied natural gas processing complex twice, causing extensive damage and sending energy prices soaring.
Trump’s threat came after a day in which Israel hit Iran’s South Pars, part of the world’s largest natural gas field. Tehran retaliated by striking an energy complex in Qatar, causing “extensive damage” and leading to a spike in energy prices. While Israel has not officially confirmed its attack on the gas field, the U.S. president said the U.S. “knew nothing” about its ally, which had “violently lashed out” at Iran “out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle East.”
Conflict across the region continues after the U.S. and Israel launched wide-ranging strikes on Iran on Feb. 28. Tehran has responded by launching attacks on Israel and U.S.-allied states in the Gulf. Israel is also fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, where more than a million people have been displaced.
Oil prices leapt to nearly $110 per barrel after Israel’s attack on the South Pars site, which is located offshore between Iran and Qatar. Following the Israeli attack, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned of “consequences beyond control, the scope of which would engulf the entire world.” Verified images of the strike showed smoke rising from at least two impacts.
Iran retaliated by striking Qatar’s Ras Laffan site on Wednesday and early Thursday. Ras Laffan is an industrial area that contains the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas processing facility. Following the first attack, state-owned QatarEnergy said “extensive damage” had been caused to the site, but all personnel were accounted for. After the site was hit for a second time, Qatar’s interior ministry said all fires at the energy facility had been brought under control without any reported injuries.
In his strongly-worded social media post early Thursday, Trump said “Qatar was in no way, shape, or form, involved with” Israel’s attack on the Iranian gas field, and Iran’s retaliatory attacks on Qatar’s Ras Laffan were made “unjustifiably and unfairly.” If Iran strikes Qatar again, Trump threatened that the U.S. would “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 added that he did not want to authorize “this level of violence and destruction because of the long term implications” for Iran, “but if Qatar’s LNG is again attacked, I will not hesitate to do so.” Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman said “the Israeli targeting of facilities linked to Iran’s South Pars field, an extension of Qatar’s North Field” was a “dangerous and irresponsible step.” The UAE and Oman also condemned the attack.
The Qatari government later described the first Iranian attack on its Ras Laffan oil site as “brazen” and a “direct threat to its national security and the stability of the region.” Two Iranian diplomats and their staff were ordered to leave Qatar within 24 hours. The attacks on the oil field have further destabilized energy markets. In early trading Thursday, the price of gas was up more than 25% on wholesale markets in the UK and Europe, before easing back slightly. The price of gas in Europe is more than double the level seen before the conflict began.
