{"id":26694,"date":"2026-03-19T13:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T13:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/26694\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T13:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T13:27:08","slug":"iran-attacks-energy-sites-defying-trump-calls-for-restraint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/26694\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Attacks Energy Sites, Defying Trump Calls for Restraint"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran maintained attacks on energy assets around the Middle East even after US President Donald Trump called for restraint, with damage to key oil and gas infrastructure triggering a fresh surge in prices.<\/p>\n

Tehran\u2019s response to Israel\u2019s assault on the giant South Pars gas field \u201cis underway and not yet complete,\u201d the semi-official Iranian Students\u2019 News Agency cited a military spokesman as saying on Thursday. That widened the scale of the conflict as it nears the end of its third week, with no sign of an imminent ceasefire.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia said a drone hit its Samref refinery on the Red Sea, a vital exit route for the world\u2019s biggest oil exporter with the Strait of Hormuz still effectively shut. State-owned Saudi Aramco briefly halted crude loadings at the port of Yanbu following the attack, according to people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n

Read more: Iran Warns Gulf Nations of Major Response After Gas Field Strike<\/a><\/p>\n

Qatar\u2019s Ras Laffan Industrial City \u2014 home to the world\u2019s largest export plant for liquefied natural gas \u2014 suffered \u201cextensive damage\u201d after an Iranian missile strike sparked a fire. The United Arab Emirates shut a major gas facility due to falling debris from missiles.<\/p>\n

Trump said in a social media post<\/a> late Wednesday that neither the US nor Qatar, which shares South Pars, was involved in the Israeli operation targeting the field, and Washington \u201cknew nothing about this particular attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

That contradicted a person familiar with the administration\u2019s knowledge of the operation, who said earlier that the US was aware of the strike but didn\u2019t participate.<\/p>\n

\u201cNO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL,\u201d Trump said on Truth Social, calling on the Islamic Republic to act with restraint.<\/p>\n

If Iran continues its strikes on Qatari assets, the US \u201cwill 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Brent crude rose more than 10% to as high as $119 a barrel on Thursday, bringing its advance since the start of the war to more than 67%. European natural gas rose as much as 35% to more than double pre-war levels.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Global equities extended losses and bonds tumbled amid widening fears that the war will stoke inflation and hurt economic growth.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia said it shot down ballistic missiles fired toward the capital, Riyadh. Two oil refineries in Kuwait were struck by drones that caused fires, according to Kuwait Petroleum Corp. Iraq reported a loss of power generation after Iran halted gas supplies from South Pars in the wake of the Israeli attack.<\/p>\n

The strike on South Pars signals a shift toward degrading Iran\u2019s economic infrastructure and curbing its ability to fight, according to Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.<\/p>\n

\u201cSouth Pars is central to Iran\u2019s gas supply and, by extension, to electricity generation and industrial activity,\u201d Azizi said by email. \u201cEven limited or temporary disruptions can translate into power shortages, industrial slowdowns, and broader economic strain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now in its 20th day, the war has claimed more than 4,100 lives across the region, with about three quarters of them in Iran.<\/p>\n

The risk of lasting damage to energy infrastructure and supply is increasing. Efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz \u2014 a chokepoint for about a fifth of global oil and LNG flows \u2014 have so far been unsuccessful, pushing prices higher. The fallout is spreading globally, with fuel, shipping and household costs already rising.<\/p>\n

US gasoline prices have soared in recent weeks, rising to around $3.88 a gallon on Thursday, according to the American Automobile Association. That\u2019s the highest level in more than two years and is piling pressure on the Trump administration before the November midterm elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cGas prices are up and we know they\u2019re up, and we know that people are hurting because of it and we\u2019re doing everything that we can to ensure that they stay lower,\u201d Vice President JD Vance said on Wednesday, calling the spike \u201ca temporary blip.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump temporarily waived a century-old shipping mandate to lower the cost of transporting energy goods around the US in a bid to curb price rises. Vance and other top administration officials plan to meet with oil executives Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n

Countries continue to vie for access and control in the Strait of Hormuz. The US said it dropped 5,000-pound bunker-buster munitions on Iranian missile sites near the waterway late Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Iran has meanwhile been moving its own oil through the strait at close to prewar levels. Members of Tehran\u2019s parliament are working on a bill that would require ships to pay Iran for safe transit, the Iranian Students\u2019 News Agency reported.<\/p>\n

In parallel with the war in Iran, Israel has stepped up an offensive in Lebanon, where it\u2019s fighting Tehran-backed Hezbollah. Israeli strikes in the country have killed 968 people, according to the Lebanese government.<\/p>\n

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency says at least 3,134 people have died in Iran. Dozens of others have been killed in the rest of the Middle East, while the US has lost 13 military personnel.<\/p>\n

The war began with the joint US-Israeli bombing of Iran on Feb. 28. Trump has since said that he started the war to disarm a potent nuclear threat, claiming Tehran was just two weeks away from acquiring a weapon. Iran has denied pursuing atomic weapons, and nuclear experts mostly disagree it could have built weapons that quickly.<\/p>\n

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Wednesday declined several times in a Senate hearing to say whether she thought Iran represented an \u201cimminent nuclear threat,\u201d as the White House has claimed.<\/p>\n

Photograph: Iranians set fire to US and Israel flags in Tehran on March 17. Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran maintained attacks on energy assets around the Middle East even after US President Donald Trump called for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2240,2276,37,1080,2051],"class_list":{"0":"post-26694","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-critical-infrastructure","9":"tag-energy-markets","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-us-iran-conflict","12":"tag-war-risks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116256076103521805","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}