Israel Was Behind Attacks on Major Gas Pipelines in Iran, Officials Say

New York Times -Feb 17th, 2024

By Farnaz Fassihi, Eric Schmitt, Ronen Bergman and Julian E. Barnes

Israel carried out covert attacks on two major natural gas pipelines in Iran this week, disrupting the flow of heat and cooking gas to provinces millions of people, according to two Western officials and a military strategist affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The strikes represent a notable shift in the shadow war that Israel and Iran have been waging by air, land, sea and cyberattack for years.

Israel has long targeted military and nuclear sites inside Iran — and assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists and commanders, both inside and outside of the country. Israel has also waged cyberattacks to disable servers belonging to the oil ministry, causing turmoil at gas stations nationwide.

But blowing up part of the country’s energy infrastructure, relied on by industries, factories and millions of civilians, marked an escalation in the covert war and appeared to open a new frontier, officials and analysts said.

“The enemy’s plan was to completely disrupt the flow of gas in winter to several main cities and provinces in our country,” Iran’s oil minister, Javad Owji, told Iranian media on Friday.

Mr. Owji, who had previously referred to the blasts as “sabotage and terrorist attacks,” stopped short of publicly blaming Israel or any other culprit. But he said that the goal of the attack was to damage Iran’s energy infrastructure and stir domestic discontent.

The office of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to comment.

The Western officials and the Iranian military strategist said the gas pipeline attacks by Israel required deep knowledge of Iran’s infrastructure and careful coordination, especially since two pipelines were hit in multiple locations at the same time.

One Western official called it a major symbolic strike that was fairly easy for Iran to repair and caused relatively little harm to civilians. But, the official said, it sent a stark warning of the damage that Israel could inflict, as conflict spreads across the Middle East and tensions rise between Iran and its adversaries, notably Israel and the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/world/middleeast/iran-israel-attacks-gas-pipelines.html