The New York Times: Israel carried out attacks on two main natural gas pipelines in Iran

The attacks stopped about 15 percent of Iran's daily natural gas production (Shutterstock)

The American New York Times quoted Western officials as saying that Israel carried out attacks on two main natural gas pipelines inside Iran last Wednesday, disrupting the flow of heat and cooking gas to several provinces inhabited by millions of people, in a remarkable shift in a secret war that Israel and Iran are waging by air and land. And sea and cyber attacks over the years.

The attacks targeted several points along two main gas pipelines in Fars and Chahar Mahal Bakhtiari provinces on Wednesday. But the service outage extended to residential homes, government buildings and major factories in at least five provinces across Iran, according to Iranian officials and local media reports.

Pipelines transport gas from the south to major cities to the north such as Tehran and Isfahan. One of the pipelines runs all the way to Astara, a city near Iran's northern border with Azerbaijan.

Energy experts estimated that the attacks on the pipelines, each of which extends about 1,200 kilometers or 800 miles and carries 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, shut out about 15 percent of Iran's daily natural gas production, making them comprehensive attacks on the infrastructure. The country's vital infrastructure.

Western officials and a military strategist affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard told the newspaper that the attacks launched by Israel on the gas pipeline require deep knowledge of Iranian infrastructure and careful coordination, especially since two pipelines were bombed in multiple locations at the same time. A Western official described it as a major symbolic strike that would be easy for Iran to repair and cause relatively little harm to civilians.

Oji: The enemy’s plan was to completely disrupt the flow of gas in the winter (Getty)

Disruption of gas flow

Iranian Oil Minister Javad Oji told Iranian media on Friday, “The enemy’s plan was to completely disrupt the flow of gas in the winter to several major cities and provinces in our country.”

Oji, who had previously referred to the bombings as “sabotage and terrorist attacks,” stopped short of publicly blaming Israel or anyone else. But he said the aim of the attack was to damage Iran's energy infrastructure and incite domestic discontent.

He continued: "We expected such acts of sabotage to occur on the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution (on February 11), and we quickly made changes in the gas transportation network to confront the enemy's goal of causing gas outages in major regions."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office declined to comment.

An official at the National Gas Company told Iranian media that the sabotage was aimed at taking out about 40 percent of the country's gas transportation capacity.

It remains unclear how the pipelines were struck — with drones, explosives attached to the pipes or some other means. Analysts said Iran's energy infrastructure has been targeted in the past, but those incidents were much smaller in scope and scale.

No party has claimed responsibility for these two bombings, nor have the authorities indicated a specific party.

The Revolutionary Guards military strategist — who, like other officials, is not authorized to speak publicly — said the Iranian government believes Israel is behind the attack because of the complexity and scope of the operation. He said that the attack certainly requires the help of agents inside Iran to know where and how to attack.

He pointed out that Iran's main pipelines, which transport gas across vast distances that include mountains, deserts and rural fields, are guarded by guards along the pipelines. He said rangers check their areas every few hours, so attackers may have been aware of their duty breaks, when the area remains unmanned.

Kpler's chief energy analyst, Homayoun Falakshahi, told the New York Times that the level of impact of the attack was very high, because the two pipelines were heading from south to north, noting that the explosions revealed the extent of the vulnerability of Iran's vital infrastructure to attacks and sabotage, stressing the difficulty of protecting it. Large networks of pipelines without investing billions in new technology.

Western officials told the New York Times that Israel also caused a separate explosion on Thursday inside a chemical plant on the outskirts of Tehran that rocked a neighborhood and columns of smoke and fire rose from the targeted site. But local officials said the factory explosion, which occurred on Thursday, was caused by an accident in the factory's fuel tank.

In December, Iran executed five people it accused of being saboteurs with links to the Israeli intelligence service (Mossad) in a decades-long hidden war that saw Tehran accuse Israel of launching attacks on its nuclear and missile programs, accusations that Israel has never confirmed or denied.

Iran said that it does not want a direct war with the United States, and denied its involvement in the attack by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on Israel last October 7, or the various attacks against American and Israeli targets in the region since then.

Source: New York Times