By Trevor Hunnicutt, Alexander Cornwell and Jana Choukeir
DOHA/WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM, March 20 (Reuters) – Israel launched further attacks on Tehran on Friday, a day after President Donald Trump told it not to repeat its strikes on Iranian natural gas infrastructure, which sharply escalated the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
The conflict has killed thousands, spread to neighbouring nations, and hit the global economy since the United States and Israel launched their initial strikes on February 28.
Early on Friday, Israel launched a wave of strikes on Tehran, targeting what the military called “infrastructure of the Iranian terror regime”. A brief statement did not provide further details.
Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates said they were dealing with missile attacks, hours before the start at sundown of the Eid al-Fitr holiday celebrating the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The latest attacks follow days of Iranian strikes on regional energy infrastructure that has roiled global markets.
ENERGY CRISIS ESCALATES
Energy prices jumped on Thursday after Iran responded to an Israeli attack on a major gas field by hitting Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, which processes around a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas, causing damage that will take years to repair.
Saudi Arabia’s main port on the Red Sea, where it has been able to divert some exports to avoid Iran’s closure of the Gulf’s exit point, the Strait of Hormuz, was also attacked on Thursday.
Oil prices fell on Friday as Western nations and Japan offered to help secure safe passage for ships through the strait – normally the conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil supplies – and the U.S. outlined moves to boost oil output.
The strikes on regional energy facilities underscored Iran’s continued ability to exact a heavy price for the U.S.-Israeli campaign, and the limits of air defences in protecting the Gulf’s most valuable and strategic energy assets.
Trump, politically vulnerable to rising fuel prices among his core voters ahead of November’s midterm elections, has lashed out at allies who have responded cautiously to his demands that they help secure the strait.
He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not repeat the attack on energy infrastructure. “I told him, ‘Don’t do that’, and he won’t do that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday.
Netanyahu later said Israel had acted alone in bombing Iran’s South Pars gas field.
Iran is being “decimated” and no longer had the capacity to enrich uranium or make ballistic missiles, but a revolution in the country would require a “ground component”, he said, without elaborating.
Some analysts say the war has strengthened Netanyahu’s hand, redrawing Israel’s political map in his favour, while doing the opposite for Trump: trapping him in a conflict with no clear exit, exposing his Gulf Arab allies to spiralling risks and undercutting the economic storyline that powered his return to office.
The war’s initial strikes, which killed Iran’s supreme leader and other top officials, came even as Washington and Tehran were in talks over Iran’s nuclear programme.
With no end in sight to the conflict, and the threat of a global oil shock growing by the day, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan issued a joint statement expressing “our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait”.
They also promised “other steps to stabilise energy markets, including working with certain producing nations to increase output”.
There was little indication of any immediate move. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reiterated that any contribution to securing the strait would come only after hostilities ended, while French President Emmanuel Macron said defending international law and promoting de-escalation “is the best we can do.”
“I have not heard anyone here (other EU leaders) express a willingness to enter this conflict — quite the opposite,” Macron said following a European summit in Brussels.
The resistance by major U.S. allies to becoming involved in the war reflects scepticism over a conflict European leaders have said they did not seek, which has unclear objectives and over which they have little control.
‘A NEW STAGE IN THE WAR’
Israel’s bombing of Iran’s South Pars gas field, which Trump said the U.S. had not known about, suggested gaps in coordination of strategy and war aims between the main protagonists.
Adding to the confusion around the attack, three Israeli officials said the operation had taken place in consultation with the United States, but was unlikely to be repeated.
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told the House Intelligence Committee that Washington’s and Israel’s goals differed: “The Israeli government has been focused on disabling the Iranian leadership. The president said that his objectives are to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile-launching capability, their ballistic missile production capability and their navy.”
Iran’s military said strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure had led to “a new stage in the war”, in which it had attacked energy facilities linked to the United States.
“If strikes (on Iran’s energy facilities) happen again, further attacks on your energy infrastructure and that of your allies will not stop until it is completely destroyed,” said Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaqari, according to state media.
A spokesperson for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said missile production continues even during wartime, adding that Iran’s missile industry is performing at a high level this year with no concerns over production or stockpiles.
QatarEnergy’s CEO told Reuters the Iranian attacks had knocked out a sixth of Qatar’s LNG export capacity, worth $20 billion a year, causing it to declare force majeure on exports and undertake repairs that would take three to five years.
(Reporting by Andrew Mills in Doha and Timour Azhari in Riyadh; Additional reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Costas Pitas, Stephen Coates and Lincoln Feast; Editing by Diane Craft, Neil Fullick and William Mallard)
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