A new and more dangerous chapter in the Middle East war opened on Wednesday when Israel struck the South Pars gasfield and Iran responded by targeting Gulf energy hubs for imminent retaliation. The Revolutionary Guards named specific facilities in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar and ordered immediate evacuations. Oil prices surged toward $110 a barrel as the conflict’s energy dimension took center stage.
The South Pars field, the world’s largest natural gas reserve shared between Iran and Qatar, had been kept out of the conflict until Wednesday. The Israeli strike — reportedly with US authorization — broke months of careful restraint around Iranian energy infrastructure. Washington and Tel Aviv had previously maintained this restraint to limit the war’s economic impact, but the decision to proceed marked a definitive and consequential policy shift.
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 targets for strikes in the coming hours. All personnel were told to evacuate without delay. Asaluyeh governor Eskandar Pasalar condemned the US-Israeli strike as “political suicide” and said Iran was now engaged in a full-scale economic war it had not sought but would not avoid.
Brent crude climbed to $108.60 per barrel, while European gas benchmarks surged more than 7.5%. Gulf oil exports had already fallen 60% from pre-war levels, the result of sustained infrastructure attacks and Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz. The third week of war had begun with Iranian attacks on the UAE’s Shah gasfield, the Fujairah port, and Iraq’s Majnoon oilfield — all before the South Pars strike had even occurred.
Qatar’s government spokesperson warned that attacking energy infrastructure constituted a threat to global energy security and the region’s environment and populations. The new chapter that opened Wednesday was unlike any that had come before — one defined not just by military strikes but by an explicit attempt to weaponize energy supply against the Gulf’s most critical infrastructure. The world’s energy markets — and the economies they sustained — braced for what might come next.