For once, Iran’s regime was not exaggerating when it warned of “consequences beyond control, the scope of which would engulf the entire world”.
The Iranian missile strike on Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar – which includes the world’s biggest gas export facility – shows how the belligerents in this war have raced up the escalatory ladder.
First, Iran targeted US military sites in the Gulf, including the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and the Al-Udeid air base in Qatar. Then, its drones and missiles began exploding at symbolic and economically valuable locations like Dubai International Airport and even some hotels.
Now, Iran has gone even further by taking aim at the energy infrastructure of its neighbours – and not just individual port facilities or pipelines, but the crown jewels of the industries that the Gulf states have spent decades creating.
Ras Laffan is the most important complex of its kind in the world, providing almost 20 per cent of global supplies of liquefied natural gas (LNG). All production there was halted on day three of the war (March 2), but the market assumed that Ras Laffan would swiftly go back into action once the conflict was over.
The significance of Iran’s latest attack – and the reason why oil and gas prices have rocketed – is that it will probably remove any chance of a quick return to normality. Before the missile struck, Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy, believed that full production at Ras Laffan could be restored in four to six weeks. Depending on the severity of the damage, months may now be required.
“Market expectations had been for a short disruption, with a controlled restart restoring supply to pre-conflict levels by mid-2026. That outlook now appears increasingly unlikely,” says Kristy Kramer, the head of LNG Strategy at Wood Mackenzie. “A more prolonged outage would further tighten the global supply and keep prices elevated for longer.”
The trigger for this escalation was an air strike, carried out on Wednesday, on Iranian facilities serving the South Pars gas field. Both Qatar and Iran accused Israel of carrying out this attack, which America denied any knowledge of.
South Pars forms part of the biggest undersea gas field in the world, shared by Iran and Qatar. Iran’s surviving leaders will believe that if they cannot extract this gas, then neither should Qatar. In their minds, attacking Ras Laffan will have been a symmetrical response.
This is what Qatar has always feared, hence it pleaded publicly for Israel to avoid triggering a destructive escalation. “The Israeli targeting of facilities linked to Iran’s South Pars field, an extension of Qatar’s North Field, is a dangerous and irresponsible step amid the current military escalation,” said Majed Al Ansari, the Qatari foreign ministry spokesman.
“We reiterate, as we have repeatedly emphasised, the necessity of avoiding the targeting of vital facilities.”
Hours later, Qatar’s forebodings were justified when Iran attacked Ras Laffan and the war escalated into a perilous new phase. To strike the hubs of the oil and gas industries of the Gulf countries is to attack their very viability as states. And because these facilities supply the world, firing missiles at them also amounts to an assault on the global economy.
But Iran’s remaining leaders may conclude from the South Pars raid that their enemies are trying to destroy not just the Islamic Republic, but the Iranian state itself. After all, no Iranian government of any kind, Islamic or otherwise, could survive without a functioning oil and gas industry.
By the remorseless logic of escalation, Iran will then feel impelled to retaliate with strikes on the facilities that keep the economies of the Gulf states alive. If this cycle continues, the viability of entire countries could be placed in jeopardy.
Hence, the stark warning from Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, of “consequences beyond control”.
Donald Trump did not exactly calm the situation by threatening to “massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars gas field” if Iran were to launch any more attacks on Qatar’s LNG plants.
The risk is that Iran’s leaders, with their backs to the wall, will see no reason to heed calls for restraint. They might believe that America or Israel will destroy the South Pars gas field anyway, and they had better strike back now before they run out of missiles.
For this pitiless cycle to be broken, the belligerents would have to privately decide to restrain their attacks and observe some self-imposed red lines.
America and Israel would need to leave Iran’s oil and gas facilities alone and hope for a corresponding decision by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Just typing that sentence shows how improbable such a sequence would be.
So far, signs of restraint in this war have been about as common as fully laden tankers traversing the Strait of Hormuz.