US, Qatar not involved in strike on Iran's gas field, says Trump

JERUSALEM/WASHINGTON: Israel's attack on an Iranian gas field on Wednesday was coordinated with the US but is not likely to be repeated, three Israeli officials said, despite President Donald Trump saying he did not know about it in advance.

The attack on Iran's South Pars gas field drew an Iranian aerial assault on energy infrastructure in Qatar and across West Asia, marking the biggest escalation in the US-Israeli war on Iran.On Wednesday night, Trump said in a social media post that Washington "knew nothing about this particular attack". The three Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations, said on Thursday 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".Trump said on Thursday that he had told his ally Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu not to strike anymore gas fields in Iran. "I told him, don't do that, and he won't do that," Trump told reporters at the White House.

"We get along great. It's coordinated, but on occasion, he'll do something that the United States opposes," Trump said.In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump said that Israel had "violently lashed out," hitting a "relatively small section" of the field. Qatar also accused Israel of attacking South Pars. "The United States knew nothing about this particular attack, and the country of Qatar was in no way, shape, or form, involved with it, nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen," Trump wrote.

He accused Iran of "unjustifiably and unfairly" retaliating against Qatar's liquefied natural gas facilities.

Iran uses most of its natural gas domestically, but Qatar is the world's third-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. South Pars is part of a larger reservoir that is shared between Qatar and Iran.In his post, Trump vowed that "NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL" on South Pars unless Iran attacked Qatar's energy facilities.

If that happened, he said, the US would "massively blow up" the oil field. "I do not want to authorise this level of violence and destruction because of the long term implications that it will have on the future of Iran, but if Qatar's LNG is again attacked, I will not hesitate to do so," Trump said.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 UAE to shut gas facilities.After Iran's attacks, Gulf Arab countries sought explanations from the Trump administration, with one country contacting US Central Command, a regional source familiar with the matter said.The Pentagon's Middle East (West Asia) command told that country that it was not informed in advance of the Israeli strike, the source said. The person spoke on condition of anonymity and declined to name the country involved.That country then contacted Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff, who said that while the strike was not a joint US-Israeli operation, Washington was informed about it ahead of time, the source said. Israel has not publicly acknowledged responsibility for the strike.The US and Israel have repeatedly sought to highlight their close coordination in their joint air assault on Iran, but officials on both sides have acknowledged that their objectives were not the same. On Thursday, US director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a House intelligence committee hearing that while Israel has been focused on "disabling the Iranian leadership," the United States has focused on destroying Iran's ballistic missile programme and its navy. agencies