Both sides in Iran war ratchet up attacks on energy facilities, as oil prices surge

Is­rael killed an­oth­er top Iran­ian of­fi­cial — the in­tel­li­gence min­is­ter — in its cam­paign against the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic’s lead­er­ship and re­port­ed­ly at­tacked an Iran­ian off­shore nat­ur­al gas field Wednes­day amid the war’s es­ca­lat­ing pres­sure on the re­gion’s eco­nom­ic lifeblood: en­er­gy.

Iran has been strik­ing its Per­sian Gulf neigh­bours’ en­er­gy fa­cil­i­ties since the U.S. and Is­rael launched the war on Feb. 28 and has made the Strait of Hor­muz ship­ping chan­nel — through which one-fifth of the world’s oil trav­els — near­ly im­pass­able. On Wednes­day, an Iran­ian mis­sile hit a ma­jor nat­ur­al gas fa­cil­i­ty in Qatar.

The price of oil surged an­oth­er 5% to over $108 a bar­rel on in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets, in­creas­ing the price of gaso­line and oth­er goods, and squeez­ing the glob­al econ­o­my. The price of Brent crude, the in­ter­na­tion­al bench­mark for oil, is now up close to 50% since the start of the war.

As the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion looks for ways to boost oil sup­plies and low­er prices, the Trea­sury De­part­ment on Wednes­day eased sanc­tions on Venezuela, say­ing U.S. com­pa­nies will be al­lowed to do busi­ness with the coun­try’s state-owned oil and gas com­pa­ny.

Af­ter Iran­ian In­tel­li­gence Min­is­ter Es­mail Khat­ib was killed in an overnight strike, Is­raeli De­fense Min­is­ter Is­rael Katz promised “sig­nif­i­cant sur­pris­es” to come. A day ear­li­er, Is­rael killed top Iran­ian se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial Ali Lar­i­jani and the head of the para­mil­i­tary Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard’s Basij force, Gen. Gho­lam Reza Soleimani.

Iran re­tal­i­at­ed Wednes­day by un­leash­ing at­tacks against Is­rael, where two peo­ple were killed near Tel Aviv. Iran al­so at­tacked Sau­di Ara­bia’s vast East­ern Province, home to many of its oil fields, as well as Kuwait, Bahrain and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

The Unit­ed States was in­formed about Is­rael’s plans to strike Iran’s mas­sive South Pars nat­ur­al gas field, but did not take part in it, ac­cord­ing to a per­son fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter. The per­son, who was not au­tho­rized to com­ment pub­licly and spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, would not say if the U.S. ad­min­is­tra­tion agreed with the Is­raeli de­ci­sion to at­tack the gas field — part of the world’s largest such re­source and a pil­lar of Iran’s en­er­gy sup­plies.

Iran — and even some Gulf neigh­bours who have ab­sorbed its en­er­gy-re­lat­ed strikes — con­demned the at­tack.

“This will com­pli­cate the sit­u­a­tion and could have un­con­trol­lable con­se­quences, the scope of which could en­gulf the en­tire world,” Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Ma­soud Pezeshkian’s wrote on X.

The Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates For­eign Min­istry called it “a dan­ger­ous es­ca­la­tion,” and Oman called it a threat to re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty and en­er­gy sup­plies.

Iran keeps up strikes on Gulf coun­tries’ oil fa­cil­i­ties

Iran has been tar­get­ing the en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture of its Gulf Arab neigh­bours, as well as mil­i­tary bases, as part of a strat­e­gy to dri­ve up oil prices and put pres­sure on the U.S. and Is­rael to back down.

QatarEn­er­gy said on X that a mis­sile hit its mas­sive Ras Laf­fan liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas fa­cil­i­ty, spark­ing a fire that caused “ex­ten­sive” dam­age. The com­pa­ny had al­ready halt­ed pro­duc­tion there be­cause of Iran­ian at­tacks.

Iran has vowed to con­tin­ue to crimp ship­ping traf­fic through the Strait of Hor­muz, which leads from the Per­sian Gulf to the open ocean. Since the war start­ed, a few ships have got­ten through — some Iran­ian, but al­so ves­sels from In­dia, Turkey and else­where. Iran in­sists the wa­ter­way is open, just not to the U.S. or many of its al­lies.

U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has ex­pressed grow­ing frus­tra­tion that no al­lies have of­fered to help open the strait. On Tues­day, he post­ed on so­cial me­dia: “WE DON’T NEED THE HELP OF ANY­ONE!”

A top British mil­i­tary of­fi­cial, Armed Forces Min­is­ter Al Carns, said Wednes­day that any re­open­ing of the strait is a long way off be­cause of “asym­met­ric threats” to ship­ping that in­clude mines, at­tack boats and drones.

Iraq, which paused op­er­a­tions at its main oil ter­mi­nal on the Per­sian Gulf last week, said Wednes­day it had reached a deal with the au­tonomous north­ern Iraqi Kur­dish ad­min­is­tra­tion to be­gin ex­port­ing 250,000 bar­rels of crude oil dai­ly via pipeline to a port in Turkey.

Sau­di Ara­bia is al­so by­pass­ing the Strait of Hor­muz, send­ing some of its oil by pipeline across the coun­try to be shipped from a Red Sea port.

Iran launch­es mul­ti­ple-war­head mis­siles at Is­rael

Re­spond­ing to the killing of Lar­i­jani, the para­mil­i­tary Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard said Wednes­day it had at­tacked cen­tral Is­rael with mul­ti­ple-war­head mis­siles that have a bet­ter chance of evad­ing de­fense sys­tems. Footage filmed by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press showed at least one such mis­sile re­leas­ing a clus­ter of mu­ni­tions over Is­rael.

Lar­i­jani was a se­nior pol­i­cy ad­vis­er to the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on strat­e­gy in nu­clear talks with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion. He was sanc­tioned by the U.S. Trea­sury in Jan­u­ary for his role “co­or­di­nat­ing” Iran’s vi­o­lent sup­pres­sion of na­tion­wide protests. Gen. Soleimani was al­so sanc­tioned by the U.S. and oth­er na­tions for his role in sup­press­ing dis­sent for years.

Iran­ian Supreme Leader Ay­a­tol­lah Mo­jta­ba Khamenei ex­pressed con­do­lences for the slay­ing of Lar­i­jani, ac­cord­ing to a writ­ten state­ment pub­lished in Iran­ian me­dia. “Un­doubt­ed­ly, the as­sas­si­na­tion of such a per­son shows the ex­tent of his im­por­tance and the ha­tred of the en­e­mies of Is­lam to­wards him,” the state­ment said.

The younger Khamenei has not made a pub­lic ap­pear­ance since his fa­ther was killed in the war’s open­ing salvos dur­ing which he re­port­ed­ly was al­so wound­ed.

Re­newed strikes in Iran

The Iran­ian ju­di­cia­ry’s Mizan news agency said an airstrike hit a cour­t­house com­plex in Larestan, a coun­ty in south­ern Iran, and that at least eight peo­ple were killed. More than 1,300 peo­ple have been killed in Iran since the con­flict start­ed, ac­cord­ing to the Iran­ian Red Cres­cent.

Mizan al­so re­port­ed that Iran ex­e­cut­ed a man on charges of spy­ing for Is­rael’s Mossad in­tel­li­gence agency. The re­port iden­ti­fied him as Kourosh Key­vani and al­leged he “pro­vid­ed im­ages and in­for­ma­tion on sen­si­tive lo­ca­tions” to Is­rael.

Swe­den’s For­eign Min­istry con­demned what it said was the ex­e­cu­tion of a Swedish cit­i­zen on Wednes­day in Iran. The cit­i­zen, whose name was not made pub­lic, was ar­rest­ed last year but ad­di­tion­al de­tails were not avail­able.

Is­rael pres­sures Hezbol­lah in Lebanon

In Lebanon, Is­rael kept up in­tense pres­sure on Iran-backed Hezbol­lah mil­i­tants, hit­ting mul­ti­ple apart­ment build­ings in Beirut and killing at least a dozen peo­ple. Hezbol­lah be­gan fir­ing rock­ets in­to north­ern Is­rael af­ter the war in Iran had be­gun.

Is­rael flat­tened an apart­ment build­ing in cen­tral Beirut about an hour af­ter is­su­ing an evac­u­a­tion no­tice — the fourth time the build­ing was tar­get­ed. Is­rael’s mil­i­tary claimed it was be­ing used by Hezbol­lah to store “mil­lions of dol­lars in­tend­ed to fi­nance its ac­tiv­i­ties,” with­out pro­vid­ing ev­i­dence.

Ten peo­ple were killed in Is­raeli airstrikes in cen­tral Beirut, ac­cord­ing to Lebanon’s Health Min­istry. An­oth­er two peo­ple were killed in an airstrike in Lebanon’s west­ern Bekaa Val­ley, it said.

Is­raeli strikes have dis­placed more than 1 mil­lion Lebanese — rough­ly 20% of the pop­u­la­tion — ac­cord­ing to the Lebanese gov­ern­ment, which says 968 peo­ple have been killed.

In Is­rael, 14 peo­ple have been killed by Iran­ian mis­sile fire. At least 13 U.S. mil­i­tary mem­bers have been killed. —DUBAI, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (AP)

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Sto­ry by JON GAM­BRELL, SAMY MAGDY and JAMEY KEAT­EN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Magdy re­port­ed from Cairo and Keat­en from Gene­va. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Qas­sim Ab­dul-Zahra in Bagh­dad, David Ris­ing in Bangkok, Ste­fanie Dazio in Berlin, Aamer Mah­dani in Wash­ing­ton, and Bassem Mroue and Sal­ly Abou AlJoud in Beirut con­tributed to this re­port.