President Donald Trump has distanced the United States from Israel’s strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field, the world’s largest natural gas deposit, as retaliatory Iranian attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure sent oil prices to their highest level in three years.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump said the United States “knew nothing about this particular attack” and that Qatar was “in no way, shape, or form, involved with it.” The strikes had prompted Iranian missile attacks on Saudi energy facilities and Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex — the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) production facility, which supplies roughly 20 per cent of global LNG.
Brent crude climbed 6.24 per cent on Thursday to $114.08 per barrel, its highest since May 2022.
The strikes and their fallout
South Pars, located in the Persian Gulf, is shared between Iran and Qatar — the Iranian portion carrying the South Pars designation, the Qatari side known as the North Field. Reports had suggested the Israeli strike was carried out with American consent and coordination, an account the White House flatly rejected.
Iran’s retaliatory strikes on the Ras Laffan complex, situated 80 kilometres north-east of Doha, have dealt a significant blow to global energy supply. Saad al-Kaabi, chief executive of QatarEnergy, said the attacks damaged facilities responsible for 17 per cent of the company’s LNG exports and warned that repairs would take three to five years.
Trump acknowledged the consequences, attributing the scale of damage to a lack of information on Iran’s part. “Unfortunately, Iran did not know this, or any of the pertinent facts pertaining to the South Pars attack,” he wrote, “and unjustifiably and unfairly attacked a portion of Qatar’s LNG gas facility.”
A threat without precedent
Trump’s post, while distancing Washington from the initial strike, made explicit what a further escalation could look like. He warned that if Iran attacks Qatar again, the United States — acting “with or without the help or consent of Israel” — 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 Israel had been told: “NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE” on Iran’s gas field unless Iran moves first.
The statement places the United States in the position of simultaneously disclaiming responsibility for the crisis and threatening to dramatically widen it — a posture that is likely to unsettle energy markets and Gulf partners already absorbing the consequences of a conflict they did not invite.
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