JERUSALEM, March 19 (Reuters) - Israel’s attack on an Iranian gas field on Wednesday was coordinated with the United States but will likely not be repeated, three Israeli officials said on Thursday, despite U.S. President Donald Trump saying he knew nothing about it.
The attack on Iran’s South Pars gas field drew an Iranian aerial assault on energy infrastructure in Qatar and across the Middle East, marking the biggest escalation in the nearly three-week U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
Israel has not publicly acknowledged responsibility for the South Pars attack. On Wednesday night, Trump said in a social media post that Washington “knew nothing about this particular attack” and that Israel would not attack the gas field further unless Iran again attacked Qatar.
The three Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Israel was not surprised by Trump’s comments.
They described the dynamic as similar to one that played out after Israel struck fuel depots in Iran several weeks ago. After those attacks, Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth said that in “that particular case those weren’t our strikes”.
Since the Israeli attack on South Pars, Iranian attacks have caused extensive damage to the world’s largest gas plant in Qatar, targeted a refinery in Saudi Arabia and forced the United Arab Emirates to shut gas facilities.
(Reporting by Jerusalem bureau; Editing by Rami Ayyub and Alison Williams)
