As Iran strikes Gulf energy sites, Trump says Israel won’t hit its gas field again — but US will if attacks go on

Day after IDF hit its South Pars field, Iran strikes Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, others, warns of ‘uncontrollable repercussions’ of further such attacks; Riyadh says it has right to military action

US President Donald Trump said early Thursday that he would not allow another Israeli attack on Iran’s South Pars natural gas field, after the IDF struck the key energy site the previous day.

Trump’s statement came after Iran attacked targets across the Gulf, including a gas hub in Qatar and oil and gas facilities in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, in response to the strike. The attacks were Iran’s latest targeting of the region amid the war with Israel and the US that began on February 28.

Iran, the US and Gulf states traded threats after the strike. Iran threatened further attacks on Gulf states if its energy sites were hit again. Trump, in turn, warned Iran to cease its attacks on Qatar’s energy infrastructure, and Saudi Arabia said it reserved the right to military action after it was attacked.

Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that Israel had “violently lashed out” at South Pars “out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle East,” while insisting that only “a relatively small section” of the oil field, the world’s largest, had been hit.

The US president claimed that Washington “knew nothing about this particular attack.” But US and Israeli officials briefing reporters earlier Wednesday said that Jerusalem did in fact coordinate the strike with the US, after Washington had fumed over an uncoordinated IDF strike on a Tehran fuel facility earlier in the war.

Following the attack, Iran had said it would retaliate by attacking oil and gas infrastructure in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and subsequently targeted those countries.

Later in the day, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that further attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure would lead to “uncontrollable repercussions whose effects extend to engulf the entire world.” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that in the event of further attacks on Iran’s sites, attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure “will not stop until it is completely destroyed.”

Trump, however, wrote that Qatar was not involved in the Israeli attack, and that Iran had “unjustifiably and unfairly attacked a portion” of the Gulf state’s Ras Laffan liquified natural gas production facility. He said that if such an attack were repeated, the US would itself destroy South Pars.

“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,” Trump wrote.

If such an Iranian attack takes place, the US — “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,” Trump added.

“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,” he wrote.

Iran’s strikes on Qatar gas field cause damage, large fire

Iran launched fresh salvos of drones and missiles toward the Gulf states Wednesday evening and into Thursday.

The missile strikes on Ras Laffan caused damage to a gas-to-liquids facility and early on Thursday sparked “sizeable fires and extensive further damage” to several liquified natural gas facilities, QatarEnergy said in a statement.

The country’s defense ministry said Qatar had been attacked by ballistic missiles from Iran, targeting the energy hub.

The attack caused a vast fire that illuminated the night sky and could be seen from roughly 30 kilometers (19 miles) away.

Thursday morning, the interior ministry said civil defense teams had “brought all fires under control in the Ras Laffan Industrial Area without any reported injuries. Cooling and sites-securing operations are still ongoing,” it said.

In the wake of the attack, the ministry wrote on X Wednesday evening that it had declared the military and security attaches of the Iranian Embassy — as well as the staff in their offices — personae non gratae.

The ministry said it had requested they leave the country within 24 hours. The decision came after repeated Iranian targeting and acts of aggression toward Qatar, the ministry’s statement said.

Four wounded by missile shrapnel in Saudi Arabia

Riyadh’s defense ministry said it intercepted four ballistic missiles on Wednesday, with a fragment falling near a refinery south of the Saudi capital.

Multiple drones were also intercepted and destroyed as they headed toward Saudi gas facilities in the kingdom’s Eastern Province.

Four people were injured when shrapnel from one interception fell on a residential area of Riyadh, the Saudi Civil Defense Agency said.

It said the four were not Saudi citizens but did not provide their nationalities.

The agency warned that attacking civilian sites was a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.”

An industry source said that oil giant Saudi Aramco’s SAMREF refinery in the Red Sea port of Yanbu was targeted in an aerial attack.

Earlier, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued an evacuation warning to several oil facilities across Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, including SAMREF, which is a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Exxon Mobil.

Yanbu is currently the only export outlet for any crude oil out of Gulf Arab countries as Iran has effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway it shares with Oman, through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply normally flows.

Saudi Aramco did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Iranian missiles shot at UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain

Mobile phone alerts sounded Thursday morning in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, warning of incoming Iranian missile fire.

The United Arab Emirates denounced Iran’s attacks targeting its Habshan gas facility and Bab field as a “dangerous escalation.”

Authorities in Abu Dhabi said the gas operations had been shut down after interceptions over the sites.

Kuwait said it shot down incoming Iranian drones early Thursday morning.

It also told citizens that its Grand Mosque, the largest mosque in Kuwait City, which can accommodate thousands of worshipers for major prayers, would be closed to worshipers on the upcoming Eid al‑Fitr holiday due to the “current circumstances.”

Authorities across Gulf countries have announced that Eid prayers will be held only inside regular mosques, with no large outdoor gatherings as a precaution.

In Bahrain, missile sirens sounded early Thursday over an incoming Iranian attack.

Cargo ship struck by projectile off UAE coast

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said that a vessel about 11 nautical miles east of Khawr Fakkan, in the Gulf of Oman off the United Arab Emirates’ eastern coast, was hit by an “unknown projectile,” igniting a fire aboard.

UKMTO issued the report early Thursday, saying authorities were still investigating the cause of the strike and that the ship’s crew managed the blaze.

Since the Iran war started, some 20 vessels in the region have come under attack due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Gulf countries: Iran’s attacks ‘cannot be justified… in any way’

A summit of Gulf Arab countries and other Arab and Islamic nations ended a meeting Thursday with a renewed, unified call for Iran to halt attacks on its neighbors.

A statement by the nations at the summit denounced “these deliberate Iranian attacks using ballistic missiles and drones, which targeted residential areas and civilian infrastructure, including oil facilities, desalination plants, airports, residential buildings, and diplomatic missions.”

“The participants emphasized that these attacks cannot be justified under any pretext or in any way,” the statement said.

The nations represented at the summit were Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

Saudi Arabia reserves the right to take military actions “if deemed necessary,” the kingdom’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said.

“What little trust there was before has completely been shattered,” he said after the meeting.

“The attacks on my country and on my neighboring countries that are not involved in this conflict — that’s all I’m interested in,” Prince Faisal said. “We’re going to use every lever we have — political, economic, diplomatic and otherwise — to get these attacks to stop.”

He criticized Iran’s attacks on Riyadh, the capital hosting the meeting.

“I cannot see it as coincidental,” he said. “That’s the clearest signal of how Iran feels about diplomacy… It tries to pressure its neighbors, and that’s not going to work.”