Trump vows to destroy Iran gas field if Qatar plant hit again

DOHA, Qatar: US President Donald Trump threatened to “massively blow up” a vast Iranian gas field unless Tehran stops striking Qatari energy facilities, which sustained extensive damage Thursday.

Crude oil prices surged five percent as the latest strikes fed fears that the nearly three-week-old Middle East war could inflict lasting damage on global energy supplies.

Tehran has carried out a series of attacks on Gulf energy sites, including on Qatar’s huge Ras Laffan LNG facility, in retaliation for an Israeli strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field — part of the world’s largest natural gas reservoir.

Trump called in a social media post for strikes on both Iranian and Qatari energy sites to halt.

Washington “knew nothing” of Israel’s earlier attack on Iran’s South Pars gas field, he said, vowing that “NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL” on the site if Tehran stops attacking Qatar.

But if Iran did not comply, the United States would “massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field”, Trump warned.

‘Extensive damage’

Energy prices have already spiralled since tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries a fifth of the world’s oil, was brought to a near standstill by the threat of Iranian attacks.

Since launching the war on Iran on February 28, US and Israeli forces have depleted the Islamic republic’s leadership in a string of strikes, the latest killing intelligence chief Esmail Khatib.

Thousands of people have been reported killed in Iran by the US-Israeli strikes, but Tehran is still unleashing missile and drone attacks across the Middle East while throttling oil supplies.

Qatar’s state energy company said firefighters managed to contain several blazes caused by Iranian missile attacks on its Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas facility.

Saudi Arabia said it reserved the “right to take military actions” after intercepting drones targeting energy infrastructure in the east, while debris from a ballistic missile landed near a refinery south of Riyadh.