U.S. faces concern about war escalating as Iran attacks fuel sites

Iranian attacks on oil and gas facilities around the Persian Gulf on Thursday posed new threats to global energy supplies, as President Trump rebuked Israel for striking a key Iranian gas field, and other nations voiced growing fears that the conflict was escalating.

Saudi Arabia said it might respond with force if Iran continues to attack facilities in the kingdom, and the price of oil once more skyrocketed.

Trump said Israel acted “out of anger” when it attacked Iran’s “extremely important and valuable” South Pars field, the world’s largest natural gas field. Writing on social media, Trump said there would be “NO MORE ATTACKS” there — which Israeli officials later confirmed — unless Iran persists in striking liquefied natural gas facilities in Qatar.

If Iranian attacks continue, however, the U.S. would “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,” Trump wrote.

The president’s remarks came as Iran’s intensifying attacks on Persian Gulf energy infrastructure further rattled and angered America’s allies in the region and sent shock waves through the global economy. The price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose to $119 a barrel — or up more than 60% since the start of the conflict — before dropping to $110.

The strikes further threatened a global energy supply already eroded by Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil is normally transported.

Despite repeated assurances from Trump and other U.S. leaders that the United States is rapidly wiping out Iran’s mine-laying, missile and drone capabilities, Iranian attacks have continued on the vital waterway — with one vessel set ablaze Thursday off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and a second damaged off Qatar.

On the other side of the Arabian Peninsula, a Saudi refinery on the Red Sea designed to bypass the strait was hit by an Iranian drone.

The strikes also added to uncertainty around the Trump administration’s grasp of the conflict’s trajectory, scope and timeline.

During a White House event Thursday with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, Trump reiterated his position that the U.S. does not need any help from its allies in fighting Iran, but that assistance in safeguarding the Strait of Hormuz would be “appropriate” — especially from those that rely on the strait for energy, such as Japan and the European Union.

He also walked back a claim he’d made in his earlier social media post that Israel had struck South Pars without telling the U.S. about its plans, saying that he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to not do it and that the two countries’ actions are “coordinated.”

Netanyahu, in his own news conference Thursday, denied deceiving Trump about the war, saying, “I misled no one.” He also said Israel would hold off on further attacks on South Pars, at Trump’s request.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in earlier remarks Thursday, doubled down on the administration’s repeated claims that the war is going to plan, and that the U.S. is at no risk of entering into another “endless” Middle East war.

Hegseth said U.S. officials “wouldn’t want to set a definitive time frame” on wrapping up the war, adding that the American people should disregard all the “noise” about the conflict “widening.”

But, he spoke as that noise was growing into a chorus in the face of the latest Iranian strikes.

French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking ahead of a European Union summit, condemned Iran’s attacks on gulf infrastructure as “reckless” and urged negotiations.

Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit called the attacks a “dangerous escalation,” and authorities in Abu Dhabi, in the Emirates, used the same phrase to describe Iran’s overnight attacks on some of their energy facilities.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said Thursday that trust between his government and Tehran “has been completely shattered,” adding that Riyadh “reserves the right to take military action if necessary.”

“The kingdom and its partners possess significant capabilities, and the patience we have shown is not unlimited,” he said after a meeting of foreign ministers in Riyadh. He did not specify when that patience would run out.

The kingdom’s air defenses have intercepted at least 457 drones, 40 ballistic missiles and seven cruise missiles since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. In that period, the UAE has downed 1,714 drones, 334 missiles and 15 cruise missiles, according to Emirati officials.

State-owned QatarEnergy said a blaze at the Ras Laffan LNG facility — the largest LNG export facility in the world and where production had already been halted — ignited after being hit in a strike by Iranian missiles. The strike caused “extensive” damage.

In Kuwait, the Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery — one of the biggest in the Middle East — and the nearby Mina Abdullah refinery both caught fire after drone attacks, officials there said.

In Israel, millions of people rushed to shelters as more than half a dozen waves of Iranian attacks targeted large parts of the country.

Meanwhile, Hegseth said that the U.S. was gearing up to deliver its “largest strike package yet” on Iran on Thursday. Both he and Trump defended a Pentagon request to Congress for $200 billion more for the war effort, with Trump calling it a “very small price to pay” to ensure the U.S. military remains prepared in a “very volatile world” and Hegseth saying that “it takes money to kill bad guys.”

The Reuters news agency on Wednesday reported that the Trump administration is considering deploying thousands of U.S. troops to Iran, citing four anonymous sources. Trump said Thursday that he was “not putting troops anywhere,” but also that he wouldn’t acknowledge such plans even if he had them. The Pentagon declined to comment.

The U.S. also took steps Thursday to stabilize the oil market.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the U.S. may soon lift sanctions on 140 million barrels of Iranian oil currently “on the water” in tankers, which he said should inject supply into the market and curb price spikes. “Depending on how you count it, that’s 10 days to two weeks of supply,” Bessent said.

The administration is also weighing another unilateral release from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to further depress prices, as American reserves fall to their lowest levels since the 1980s.

Were sanctions to be removed, it would serve as a massive financial lifeline to the Iranian government, enabling Tehran to reap billions in revenue that it could use to fund its ongoing fight against the U.S. and Israel.

Iran, in turn, threatened additional retaliation if their energy infrastructure is further attacked — with an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesperson saying the response to future attacks would be “far more severe.”

“We warn the enemy that you made a major mistake by attacking the energy infrastructure of … Iran,” said the spokesperson in a statement carried by the semiofficial news agency ISNA. “If it is repeated again, the next attacks on your energy infrastructure and that of your allies will not stop until their complete destruction.”

The New York-based Soufan Center, in a research note, said that Israel’s strike on South Pars — which directly threatened Iran’s electricity supplies — marked a “clear expansion of the conflict.”

“Israel’s target selection in this war has heavily focused on the institutions, leaders and infrastructure,” the think tank said. “It now seeks to inflict additional pressure on the regime by making the living conditions for civilians intolerable.”

Amid the tensions, gulf leaders have also expressed growing dissatisfaction with Washington.

On Wednesday, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, a central figure in the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, described the war as a “catastrophe,” and said the Trump administration’s “greatest miscalculation” was “allowing itself to be drawn into this war in the first place.”

Albusaidi added Iran’s retaliation against gulf states “was an inevitable, if deeply regrettable and completely unacceptable, result” that “was probably the only rational option available” to an Iranian leadership facing an existential war.

“America’s friends have a responsibility to tell the truth,” he said. “This is an uncomfortable truth to tell, because it involves indicating the extent to which America has lost control of its own foreign policy. But it must be told.”

Rector reported from Colorado and Bulos from Beirut. Times staff writer Gavin J. Quinton in Washington contributed to this report.