President Trump said late Wednesday that the United States and Qatar were not involved in what he said was an Israeli attack on Iran’s South Pars gas field, even as he threatened to destroy the field if Tehran persisted in striking Qatar’s energy facilities.
Hours after the attack on South Pars on Wednesday, natural gas facilities in Qatar were hit by attacks that the Qatari authorities attributed to Iran. They were the latest in a series of escalating strikes on energy infrastructure that have sent oil and gas prices soaring.
In a social media post, Mr. Trump said that Israel had “violently lashed out,” hitting a “relatively small section” of the field. Qatar also accused Israel of attacking South Pars, one of the largest gas fields in the world. Israel has not commented on the strike.
“The United States knew nothing about this particular attack, and the country of Qatar was in no way, shape, or form, involved with it, nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen,” Mr. Trump wrote. He accused Iran of “unjustifiably and unfairly” retaliating against Qatar’s liquefied natural gas facilities.
Iran uses most of its natural gas domestically, but Qatar is the world’s third-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. South Pars is part of a larger reservoir that is shared between Qatar and Iran.
In his post, Mr. Trump vowed that “NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL” on South Pars unless Iran attacked Qatar’s energy facilities. If that happened, he said, the United States would “massively blow up” the oil 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, but if Qatar’s LNG is again attacked, I will not hesitate to do so,” Mr. Trump said.
Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.
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