Iran’s energy threat loomed over the Gulf on Wednesday after an Israeli strike on the South Pars gasfield broke what officials and analysts described as the conflict’s last taboo. The Revolutionary Guards named specific facilities in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar as targets for imminent strikes and ordered evacuation. Oil prices surged toward $110 a barrel as the breaking of the last taboo unleashed the most dangerous retaliatory threat in the conflict’s history.
South Pars, the world’s largest natural gas reserve, is shared between Iran and Qatar. The Israeli strike — reportedly with US backing — was the first time Iran’s fossil fuel production had been directly targeted, breaking a taboo that both sides had maintained throughout the conflict. Washington and Tel Aviv had deliberately upheld this taboo, knowing that breaking it would trigger the kind of sweeping and specific retaliatory threat now looming over the Gulf.
Iran’s state broadcaster named Saudi Arabia’s Samref refinery and Jubail complex, the UAE’s al-Hosn gasfield, and Qatar’s Mesaieed and Ras Laffan facilities as imminent targets. Workers and residents were instructed to evacuate without any delay. The governor of Asaluyeh province called the US-Israeli taboo-breaking “political suicide” and declared the conflict had entered a full-scale economic warfare phase.
Brent crude rose nearly 5% to $108.60 per barrel, while European gas prices jumped more than 7.5%. Gulf oil exports had already been cut by 60% from pre-war levels due to sustained infrastructure damage and Iran’s Strait of Hormuz blockade. Iran had maintained its own crude exports through the strait while blocking Gulf neighbors from doing so — a strategic weapon that had given it significant leverage throughout the conflict. The looming threat of Iranian strikes on Gulf energy facilities threatened to push the supply crisis to catastrophic levels.
Qatar’s government spokesperson Majid al-Ansari warned that targeting energy infrastructure was a direct threat to global energy security, the environment, and millions of regional residents. The last taboo had been broken — and the consequence was Iran’s most threatening and specific energy declaration yet. The looming threat it created would determine the shape of the conflict’s next and most economically consequential phase.