On Wednesday, Iran lashed out at one of its neighbors yet again, striking Qatar's Ras Laffan Industrial City, a major liquified natural gas (LNG) facility. This attack came after Israel struck Iran's South Pars Gas Field.
On Thursday, President Trump issued a stark warning on what's left of the Iranian regime: Target Qatar again, and Iran's South Pars Gas field will be completely destroyed.
President Donald Trump said in a social media post that Israel carried out a strike on Iran's South Pars Gas Field and warned that any further retaliation targeting Qatar would trigger a massive U.S. response.
Trump wrote that "Israel, out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle East, has violently lashed out at a major facility known as South Pars Gas Field in Iran," adding that only "a relatively small section of the whole has been hit."
He said the United States "knew nothing about this particular attack" and emphasized that "the country of Qatar was in no way, shape, or form, involved with it, nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen."
Qatar, we might recall, has had generally friendly relations with Iran over the years, making this attack a trifle baffling. However it started, President Trump's warning is clear: Don't target Qatar again.
Trump warned that if Qatar's liquefied natural gas infrastructure is targeted again, "the United States of America, with or without the help or consent of Israel, will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before."
He added that he does not want to authorize such action "because of the long term implications that it will have on the future of Iran," but said he "will not hesitate" if further attacks occur.
Any post-war Iran, which will hopefully be a modern nation instead of a vicious 7th-century theocracy, will be depending on that petroleum and natural gas infrastructure to get their economy rolling again. And the South Pars field is a big one; like Qatar's Ras Laffan Industrial City, South Pars is a major natural gas extraction and processing facility. The field that South Pars sits atop is reported to have as much as 1,800 trillion cubic feet of recoverable reserves, that we know of. Before the current conflict started, South Pars was producing as much as two billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. Assuming the facility survives the current fighting more or less intact, it would be a big boost for any new Iranian economy, but President Trump has made it clear that it won't survive if Iran hits Qatar's fields again.
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And, again, this appears to be an act on the part of the Iranian regime's remnants that smacks of desperation. Qatar has had no role in the ongoing offensive against the Iranian theocracy. Iran has, for some time now, been randomly lashing out at its neighbors, even those nations that have been friendly with Iran in the past. That's a pretty good indication that Tehran has lost control of the military, and that regional and even local commanders are just lashing out at whatever they can reach.
Editor's Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
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