Israel says it will stop striking Iranian energy sites after rebuke from Trump
The bombing of more energy facilities from both sides threatened to draw in both Gulf and European powers and exposed tensions between the U.S. and Israel
Israel said
it will no longer target energy infrastructure after an attack on an Iranian
gas field sparked retaliatory strikes against energy assets across the Middle
East, causing oil and gas prices to surge and prompting a rebuke from President
Donald Trump.
“Israel
acted alone,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a press conference on
Thursday, after Israeli officials previously said they had informed the U.S.
about the attack.
Netanyahu
also said Israeli forces would help the U.S. attempt to reopen the Strait of
Hormuz and that the war would be over faster than people think, in comments
that helped calm markets on a day that already-elevated energy prices spiked
once again.
“I told him,
‘don’t do that.’ And he won’t do that,” Trump said Thursday at the White House,
referring to Netanyahu. “We get along great. It’s coordinated. But on occasion,
he’ll do something, and if I don’t like it, then — so we’re not doing that.”
The sharp
escalation, with the bombing of more energy facilities from both sides,
threatened to draw in both Gulf and European powers and exposed tensions
between the U.S. and Israel as the war drags on.
For
Washington, the costs of the Iran campaign it launched alongside Israel were
becoming clearer as the war neared the end of its third week. On Thursday, Iran
said its air defence “seriously damaged” a U.S. F-35 stealth fighter, with U.S.
Central Command saying one of the warplanes made an emergency landing and the
pilot was in stable condition.
The Pentagon
also asked Congress for an additional $200 billion to pay for the war, a person
familiar with the matter said. The enormous funding request suggested the U.S.
was girding for a protracted conflict, though Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
downplayed concerns and said the U.S. was “on plan” with its war goals.
“It takes
money to kill bad guys,” Hegseth said in a combative news conference where he
denied “that we’re somehow spinning toward an endless abyss or a forever war or
quagmire.”
Yet it’s not
clear whether the Defense Department can persuade the sharply divided U.S.
Congress to provide the money. The sum is far larger than the estimated $65
billion the U.S. has spent in security assistance to Ukraine since 2022 and
suggests that the administration sees a long campaign ahead against Iran.
Democrats criticized the plan and Republicans were noncommittal.
“If there is
any hope to get my vote, they have to come forward with a plan,” Senator Gary
Peters, a Michigan Democrat told Bloomberg Television on Thursday evening.
“They haven’t come through with what an end goal looks like, or what victory
looks like.”
With no end
to the war in sight, oil and gas prices soared once again, and bonds tumbled
amid widening fears the war will fuel inflation and suppress economic growth.
Equities in Asia and Europe extended losses, though U.S. stocks staged a sharp
recovery late in the session as Netanyahu said his country would help the U.S.
open the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi vowed in a post on X to show “ZERO restraint”
if the country’s energy infrastructure was hit again.
As part of
the barrage, Saudi Arabia said a drone hit its Samref refinery on the Red Sea,
a vital exit route for the world’s biggest oil exporter, while the kingdom said
it also shot down ballistic missiles fired toward the capital, Riyadh.
Qatar
reported “extensive damage” at the world’s largest liquefied natural gas export
plant, with QatarEnergy saying the attacks would cost about $20 billion a year
in lost revenue and would take as long as five years to repair.
The UAE shut
a major gas facility because of falling debris from missiles. Two oil
refineries in Kuwait were struck by drones that caused fires, according to
Kuwait Petroleum Corp. Iraq also reported a loss of power generation after Iran
halted gas supplies from South Pars in the wake of the Israeli attack.
The latest
attacks increased the potential for other countries to join the conflict. Saudi
Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud warned overnight that the kingdom’s
restraint isn’t “unlimited,” and warned it could take military action.
“It could be
a day, two days, or a week,” he told reporters in Riyadh, adding the
relationship between the kingdom and Tehran has “completely shattered.”
The energy
strikes also frayed close ties between the U.S. and Israel, with Trump saying
in a social media post late Wednesday that “NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY
ISRAEL” on South Pars. He threatened the U.S. “will massively blow up the
entirety of the South Pars Gas Field” if Iran continued hitting Qatar.
While
Netanyahu’s vow to avoid Iran’s energy infrastructure may appease Trump’s
officials, the president’s spy chief Tulsi Gabbard acknowledged earlier
Thursday that the U.S. and Israel had different goals in the Iran war. The U.S.
was focused more on degrading Tehran’s military, while Israel was focusing on
eliminating the country’s leadership.
The Israeli
strikes and Iranian retaliation caused Brent crude prices to rise as high as
$119 a barrel on Thursday before easing to end the session near $108 a barrel.
Prices are now at the highest level since July 2022.
Now in its
20th day, the war has claimed more than 4,100 lives across the region, with
about three quarters of them in Iran. Dozens have been killed across the Middle
East, while the U.S. has lost 13 military personnel and numerous aircraft.
Israel has
also stepped up a parallel offensive in Lebanon, where it’s fighting Hezbollah,
a militia backed by Iran. Israeli strikes in the country have killed 968
people, according to the Lebanese government.
The risk of
lasting damage to energy infrastructure and supply is increasing. Efforts to
reopen the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint for about a fifth of global oil and
LNG flows — have so far been unsuccessful, pushing energy prices higher. The
fallout is spreading globally, with fuel, shipping and household costs already
rising.
U.S.
gasoline prices have shot up in recent weeks, rising to around $3.88 a gallon
on Thursday, according to the American Automobile Association. That’s the
highest level in more than three years and is piling pressure on the Trump
administration before the November midterm elections.
“Gas prices
are up and we know they’re up, and we know that people are hurting because of
it and we’re doing everything that we can to ensure that they stay lower,” Vice
President JD Vance said on Wednesday, calling the spike “a temporary blip.”
Trump
temporarily waived a century-old shipping mandate to lower the cost of
transporting energy goods around the U.S. in a bid to curb price rises.
The war
began with the joint U.S.-Israeli bombing of Iran on Feb. 28.
Trump has
since said that he started the operation to disarm a potent nuclear threat,
claiming Tehran was just two weeks away from acquiring a weapon. Iran has
denied pursuing atomic weapons, and nuclear experts mostly disagree it could
have built weapons that quickly.
Earlier this
week, a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official, Joe Kent, who had previously
been supported by Trump in failed bids for Congress, resigned publicly over the
war, saying Iran “posed no imminent threat to our nation.”
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