Iranian reprisal for attack on world's largest gas field hits Qatar LNG facility, ports and vessels

Iran has retaliated for what, according to US President Donald Trump, was a unilateral strike by Israel on Iran’s South Pars gas field, the world’s largest-known natural gas deposit that stretches from Iran into Qatar, where it is called the North Field. 

Iran’s Ministry of Petroleum said that several facilities were damaged in the strike.

Iran telegraphed its targets in response to the attack, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issuing a statement that energy and petrochemical facilities across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar had been designated "legitimate and priority targets" for strikes and calling for civilian and personnel evacuations.

The most severe shipping casualty from the Iranian reprisal was, according to a Vanguard Tech report, a fire on board a vessel off the UAE’s busy deepwater port of Khor Fakkan, which handles container vessel traffic and bunker fuelling for vessels. 

Vanguard Tech said the chief security officer of the vessel reported that all crew abandoned ship and that a Cook Islands-flagged tanker rescued 15 crew members in the anchorage area. The vessel’s captain remains unaccounted for, and the ship was reported ’ablaze’.

The Royal Navy-operated United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) Centre reported the location of the attack as 11 nautical miles east of Khor Fakkan and the cause of the fire as an ’unknown projectile’.

A second vessel was impacted by debris from a drone at Qatar’s primary export facility for LNG, Ras Laffan, according to Vanguard Tech. The vessel, tug Halul 69, suffered damage to a bridge window but no structural damage, and all crew were reported safe. UKMTO sited the tug at four nautical miles east of Ras Laffan.

US President Donald Trump has disavowed any knowledge of the Israeli strikes on Iran’s South Pars gas fields but threatened to "massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field" if "Iran unwisely decides to attack a very innocent, in this case, Qatar".

The threat was part of a long and digressive post on the social media property, Truth Social, that the US President owns. The full post can be seen below.

US-based Axios has reported that the strike on South Pars by Israel was "co-ordinated with and approved by the Trump administration", citing confirmation by an unnamed US Defense official and other US and Israeli officials whose names remained off the record. 

Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement condemning what it called Iran’s "blatant" attack on Ras Laffan and said the attack caused fires that inflicted "significant damage to the facility".

The ministry said Qatar views the attack as "a dangerous escalation". 

Qatar’s Prime Minister and Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Dr Majed Al Ansari also took issue with Israel’s targeting of South Pars, an extension of Qatar’s North Field, calling it "a dangerous and irresponsible step" and "a threat to global energy security".

The UAE, too, condemned the attack on South Pars, with its Ministry of Foreign Affairs mirroring Qatar’s language on the threat to global energy security and the ’dangerous escalation’ that the attack represented.

Iran has reportedly fired on Saudi cities and energy facilities, with the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Defence reporting multiple ballistic missiles launched at Riyadh and intercepted, and five drones intercepted that were targeting the Saudi Samref refinery, among several drone strike attempts across the country.

The Saudi Ministry of Defence said a drone had hit the Samef refinery and that "the damage is being assessed".

Vanguard has reported that Kuwaiti energy infrastructure has been targeted by drones.

Operational units at the Al-Ahmadi Port refinery and the Mina Abdullah refinery, both operated by Kuwait National Petroleum Company, were hit in drone attacks with small fires at both sites reportedly quickly contained, Vanguard said.

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