WASHINGTON (TNND) — On the twentieth day of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran, stock exchanges worldwide plummeted on news of an exchange of strikes that destroyed key energy infrastructure in the Middle East and sent oil prices soaring.
Iran did retaliate, hitting energy infrastructure belonging to Arab nations across the Gulf, including Qatar. (TNND)
President Donald Trump claimed not to have known about Israel’s plan to strike Iranian facilities on the South Pars gas field. The strikes also damaged Qatari facilities on site. Trump said Israel carried out the strike “out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle East.”
Trump said in a social media post, “NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL pertaining to this extremely important and valuable South Pars Field unless Iran unwisely decides to attack a very innocent, in this case, Qatar – In which instance the United States of America, with or without the help or consent of Israel, will 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.”
Iran did retaliate, hitting energy infrastructure belonging to Arab nations across the Gulf, including Qatar.
During a press conference on Thursday, Qatari Prime Minister and top diplomat Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani accused the U.S., Israel and Iran of continuous attempts to pull the entire region into their war.
“This attack will have huge repercussions on our oil or energy supplies around the world,” the prime minister said.
These latest strikes and their impact on energy prices have startled even the most seasoned energy analysts, like GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan.
“As an energy analyst, you look at this from the perspective of numbers and data, but then you have the aspect of like, how did we get here and is this going to get better? And there’s just some like, thoughts in the back of your head that you know, when these types of things happen, how apocalyptic is it going to get?” De Haan said.
Average U.S. gasoline prices have risen every single day of this war; they increased another four cents between Wednesday and Thursday, according to AAA.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump claimed increased energy prices were part of his calculus for going to war with Iran, saying it’s a price worth paying to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
“I thought it would be worse, much worse, actually. I thought there was a chance it could be much worse. It’s not bad and it’s gonna be over with pretty soon,” Trump said.
De Haan disagreed. Even if the war ended today, the damage that’s been done to infrastructure would take months, at least, to repair, he said.
“I mean all of this is working out terrific for Iran,” De Haan said. “Who now has been empowered by creating chaos.”
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