Strike on Iran gasfield exposes US-Israel rift as Trump claims he did not know | US foreign policy
The US-Israeli war against Iran has further exposed divisions between the two countries after an Israeli attack on Iran’s largest gas field angered US allies in the Gulf and led Donald Trump to say he knew nothing about the attack in advance; Israeli officials disputed this claim.
Speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump said he spoke with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu after attacks on Iran’s South Pars gas field, part of a reserve shared with Qatar, and told the Israeli prime minister to avoid further attacks on energy infrastructure that could escalate a regional war.
“I told him, ‘Don’t do that,’ and he won’t do that,” Trump said. “We didn’t argue [the strikes]. We are independent but we get along very well. Coordinated. But every now and then he’ll do something, and if I don’t like it… so we won’t do it anymore.”
Israeli attacks on the South Pars gas fields have opened a Pandora’s box of retaliatory attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure, including pipelines and natural gas processing facilities that serve LNG (liquefied natural gas) to economies around the world, primarily in Asia.
While the United States focused on targeting Iran’s military, naval, and ballistic missile complex, Israel instead carried out targeted assassinations and bombed civilian infrastructure. These attacks raised serious ecological concerns following the bombing of oil depots in Tehran and prompted Iran to launch retaliatory strikes on Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City as well as Saudi Arabia’s Samref refinery near the Red Sea port of Yanbu, the only outlet for the country’s crude oil exports due to the Strait of Hormuz currently being closed.
Trying to distance himself from the Israeli attacks without direct condemnation, Trump claimed on Truth Social that he knew nothing about the targeting of Iran’s gas reserves in advance and would oppose them in the future unless Iran launched further attacks on Qatar’s energy infrastructure.
“ISRAEL will not launch further attacks on South Pars unless Iran unwisely decides to attack Qatar, in which case the United States of America, with or without Israeli assistance or consent, will massively blow up the entire South Pars Gas Field with a force and force Iran has never seen before,” Trump said in his message. he wrote.
Israeli officials disputed this claim, telling US and Israeli media that Washington was in fact informed of the South Pars gas field attack before it took place.
Israel’s efforts to achieve regime change and attacks on critical infrastructure have increasingly fueled criticism among US allies that Washington has effectively allowed its foreign policy to be captured by Netanyahu’s government.
“The American administration’s biggest miscalculation, of course, was that it allowed itself to be dragged into this war,” Omani foreign minister Badr Albusaidi wrote. “This is not America’s war, and there is no likely scenario that both Israel and America will get what they want from this.”
Late Thursday, Netanyahu denied dragging the United States into the conflict, telling reporters: “Does anyone really think anyone can tell President Trump what to do?”
He also claimed that thanks to US-Israeli attacks, Iran will no longer be able to enrich uranium and build ballistic missiles.
It comes a day after Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, told lawmakers that Iran has not enriched uranium since Israel attacked its nuclear infrastructure last year.
In her written statement to the intelligence committee in the House of Representatives, Gabbard said, “As a result of Operation Midnight Tow Truck, Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was eliminated. Since then, no efforts have been made to rebuild its enrichment capacity.”
Gabbard, who had openly and repeatedly expressed her opposition to the war with Iran until this year, also said that Israel and the USA had different goals in the war.
“The goals set forth by the President are different from the goals set out by the Israeli government,” Gabbard told the House intelligence committee.
“We can see from the operations that the Israeli government is focused on disabling the Iranian leadership. The President stated that their goal is to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile launch capacity, ballistic missile production capacity and navy.”
Anger over the Iran war has led to a marked split within the administration. Joe Kent, the former director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center and an ally of Gabbard, resigned from his post earlier this week.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” he wrote. “Iran did not pose an imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war under pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
