Iran-US war latest: Netanyahu says Tehran ‘weaker than ever’ and praises ‘good friend’ Trump

Natural gas prices in Europe surged as much as 35% on Thursday as Iranian and Israeli strikes targeted some of the Middle East’s most important gas infrastructure, doing damage that will likely take years to repair.

The strikes on energy facilities since the onset of the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran have brought to life some of the energy industry’s worst fears – that a conflict in the region will leave long-term damage and shortages in global energy supplies.

“We are now well on the road to the doomsday gas-crisis scenario,” said Saul Kavonic, an energy analyst at MST Financial.

“Even once the war ends, the disruption to LNG (liquefied natural gas) supply could last for months or even years.”

Iran on Thursday struck the Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas facility in Qatar, the world’s largest LNG complex, a day after Israel attacked Iran’s huge South Pars gas facilities.

The hit on Ras Laffan destroyed two LNG trains that could cause a reduction of around 17 per cent of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas exports for between three and five years.

“I never in my wildest dreams would have thought that Qatar would be – Qatar and the region – in such an attack, especially from a brotherly Muslim country in the month of Ramadan, attacking us in this way,” QatarEnergy chief executive Saad al-Kaabi told Reuters.

He said the state-owned gas company may have to declare force majeure on long-term contracts to Belgium, China, Italy and South Korea.

Gas prices in Europe rose by as much as 35% on Thursday and oil jumped as much as 10%, before paring gains.

Real-world footage of multi-million dollar airstrikes that have killed hundreds of Iranians has been spliced together with clips from video games and pop culture references in montages that appeal to accounts on Elon Musk’s X, all while trolling their antiwar critics.

Iran no longer has the capacity to enrich uranium or make ballistic missiles after 20 days of US-Israeli air attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a news conference this evening.

“We are winning, and Iran is being decimated,” Netanyahu said, adding that he believes Iran’s missile and drone arsenal is being massively degraded and will be destroyed.

“What we’re destroying now are the factories that produce the components to make these missiles and to make the nuclear weapons that they’re trying to produce,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu did not provide evidence for his claim that Iran no longer had the capacity to enrich uranium.

Despite the nearly three week war, it was still too soon to tell whether Iranians will take to the streets to try to overthrow their government, Netanyahu said.

“It’s up to the Iranian people to show that, to choose the moment and to rise to the moment,” he said.

While the war so far has been conducted through air attacks, Netanyahu said there could be a ground component as well and “there are many possibilities for this ground component.” He did not elaborate.

Netanyahu also denied he dragged the United States into the conflict.

“Does anyone eally think that someone can tell President Trump what to do?” he said.

Benjamin Netanyahu said he believes pipelines should be built to transport Middle East oil and gas across the Arabian Peninsula and up to Israeli ports to avoid threats by Iran in the Hormuz Strait and other Gulf waters.

A day after Israel attacked Iran’s main gas field in a sharp escalation of the war, Netanyahu told a press conference that Tehran no longer has the capacity to enrich uranium, a claim that has been contested by the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog.

Netanyahu sought during the 45-minute event to defend his country’s military operations even as its attacks on Iran’s South Pars field inspired tit-for-tat strikes on energy plants across the Gulf, sending energy prices spiralling.

France’s foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot will arrive in Israel on Friday, in an unscheduled visit, after visiting Beirut as part of efforts to secure a ceasefire in Lebanon.

As it announced Barrot’s visit, the French foreign ministry added that Barrot would discuss with Israeli authorities regional security and humanitarian aid issues, and attempts to de-escalate the conflicts in the Middle East

The Israeli bombing of the South Pars gas field has chilling parallels to Russia’s bombing of Ukrainian infrastructure, which has been condemned as a possible war crime.

World affairs editor Sam Kiley writes that such a strategy will cause needless pain and do nothing to bring the regime to its knees.

Iran intensified its attacks on oil and natural gas facilities around the Gulf on Thursday, raising the stakes in a war that is sending shock waves through the global economy.

The strikes, in retaliation for an Israeli attack on a key Iranian gas field, sent fuel prices soaring and risked drawing Iran’s Arab neighbours directly into the conflict.

Iran’s targeting of energy production further stressed global supplies already under pressure because of its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil is transported.

Since the US and Israel launched the war on 28 February, Iran’s top leaders have been killed in air strikes and the country’s military capabilities have been severely degraded.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Thursday that Iran no longer has the ability to enrich uranium or make ballistic missiles.

Still, Iran – now led by the son of the supreme leader killed in the war’s opening salvo – remains capable of missile and drone attacks rattling its Gulf Arab neighbours and a global economy dependent on the energy they produce.

The president is supposed to be a good enough businessman to know when to cut his losses and call it quits – he should go back to making America great again while he has the chance, writes Sean O’Grady.

Benjamin Netanyahu said “Iran’s air defences have been rendered useless, their navy is lying at the bottom of the sea… their air force is nearly destroyed”.

In a press conference this evening, the Israeli leader said he hopes the Iranian people will rise up against the Islamic Republic that has ruled for nearly half a century, but he conceded “it’s too early” to say whether that will happen.

There has been no sign of such an uprising since the war began, after Iranian authorities quelled mass protests in January.