Iran yesterday intensified its attacks on its Gulf Arab neighbors’ energy sites, hitting a Saudi Arabian refinery on the Red Sea, and setting Qatari liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities and two Kuwaiti oil refineries ablaze as it struck back following an Israeli attack on its main natural gas field.
A ship was set ablaze off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and another was damaged off Qatar.
Saudi Arabia had begun pumping large volumes of oil west to avoid the Strait of Hormuz and ship it from the Red Sea, but the security of that route was called into question after Iran’s drone hit the country’s SAMREF refinery in the Red Sea port city of Yanbu.
Photo: AFP / US Central Command
Qatar, a key source of natural gas for world markets, said firefighters put out a blaze at a major LNG facility after it was hit by Iranian missiles.
Production had already been halted there after earlier attacks, but it said the latest wave of missiles caused “sizeable fires and extensive further damage.”
A drone attack on Kuwait’s Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery sparked a fire, but caused no injuries, the state-run KUNA news agency reported.
The refinery is one of the biggest in the Middle East, with a petroleum production capacity of 730,000 barrels per day.
Shortly after, a drone attack set ablaze the nearby Mina Abdullah refinery, officials said.
Authorities in Abu Dhabi said they were forced to shut down operations at its Habshan gas facility and Bab field, calling Iranian overnight attacks on the sites a “dangerous escalation.”
Missile alert sirens sounded in multiple other areas across the Gulf, while Israel warned of incoming Iranian fire.
Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE all denounced the Iranian attacks, with Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat saying assaults on the kingdom meant “what little trust there was before has completely been shattered.”
The wave of Iranian attacks came after Israel hit South Pars, the Iranian part of the world’s largest gas field offshore in the Persian Gulf and owned jointly with Qatar.
In Washington, US President Donald Trump said that Israel would not attack South Pars again, but warned on social media that if Iran continued striking Qatar’s energy infrastructure, the US would retaliate and “massively blow up the entirety” of the field.
“I do not want to authorize this level of violence and destruction because of the long-term implications that it will have on the future of Iran,” Trump said on social media.
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