A US newspaper reported that Israel had sabotaged two gas pipelines inside Iran this week. The New York Times Based on reports from two Western officials close to the Iranian regime's elite Revolutionary Guards and an Iranian military strategist.
The move, the newspaper, citing military analysts, underscores, is an escalation of the shadow conflict between Israel and Iran: If Israel had already killed nuclear scientists inside and outside Iran, or carried out cyber attacks affecting gasoline pumps, for example, destroying factories and part of the energy infrastructure needed by millions of citizens would be a different matter. is an act of intention.
Without referring to the “enemy,” Iran said it would “completely block the flow of gas to several cities and provinces in the winter,” Petroleum Minister Javad Ovji said on Friday.
The minister had earlier said the explosions were acts of “sabotage and terrorist attacks” aimed at damaging Iran's energy infrastructure and causing internal unrest.
“This shows that the clandestine networks operating in Iran have expanded their target list and gone beyond the military and nuclear facilities,” said Shahin Moderres, a Rome-based security analyst specializing in the Middle East. “This is a big deal. A challenge and a blow to the reputation of Iran's secret services and security agencies.
A military strategist associated with the Revolutionary Guards — who, like other sources cited in the article, was not authorized to speak publicly about the attacks — said the Iranian government believed Israel was behind the attack because of its complexity and nature. This operation requires the help of collaborators inside Iran to know where and how to strike.
Major gas pipelines in Iran are monitored by guards at regular intervals, he said, adding that vandals know when the sites are not monitored.
It is not clear what means were used to trigger the blast.
“We've never seen anything of this scale and scope,” Homayun Falakshahi, an energy analyst at Brussels-based energy analysis firm Kpler, also told the US daily. “The impact is huge because these are two important gas pipelines connecting the north and the south.” Each gas pipeline is about 1200 kilometers long.
One of the sources cited The New York Times He said the attacks had a large symbolic value because it would not be difficult for Iran to repair the damage (which could take days and force gas supplies to be interrupted). But deep knowledge of Iranian infrastructure and the fact that both pipelines were hit in multiple locations at once required a lot of coordination.
The idea is to send a message to Iran about Israel's ability to inflict damage on the Islamic Republic when Tehran-backed movements such as Yemen's Houthis continue to fire on ships in the Red Sea. while the US ) and Israeli and Lebanese Hezbollah forces routinely open fire in areas near the border.
There have also been attacks by Iranian-backed forces on US bases in Iraq and Syria — including one, at a base in Jordan near the Syrian border, that killed three US soldiers — and US attacks against these movements.
In January, Iran suffered its worst terror attack since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979, when a twin suicide attack at a ceremony marking the death anniversary of powerful Qassem Soleimani killed around 100 people. The general in charge of Iranian strategy in the Middle East and was killed by the US in an attack in Baghdad in 2020.
Regime figures at the time pointed the finger at Israel, but Daesh (the Islamic State itself) claimed responsibility for the attack.
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