Israel carried out covert attacks on two major natural gas pipelines inside Iran this week, disrupting the flow of heat and cooking gas to provinces with millions of people, according to two Western officials and an Iranian military strategist.
They said the gas pipeline attacks by Israel required deep knowledge of Iran’s infrastructure and careful coordination, especially since two pipelines were hit in multiple locations at the same time, according to the New York Times.
The Western officials said Israel also caused a separate blast on Thursday inside a chemical factory on the outskirts of Tehran that rattled a neighborhood and sent plumes of smoke and fire into the air. But local officials said the factory explosion, which took place on Thursday, stemmed from an accident in the factory’s fuel tank.
The strikes represent a notable shift in the shadow war that Israel and Iran have been waging by air, land, sea, and cyberattack for years.
Israel has long targeted military and nuclear sites inside Iran — and assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists and commanders, both inside and outside of the country. Israel has also waged cyberattacks to disable servers belonging to the oil ministry, causing turmoil at gas stations nationwide.
But blowing up part of the country’s energy infrastructure marked an escalation in the covert war and appeared to open a new frontier, officials and analysts said.
According to a report from the Iranian News Agency, an explosion described as "sabotage" rattled the Burojen-Shahrekot gas pipeline in the Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari provinces of southwest Iran early last Wednesday. There were no reported casualties from the incident.
Subsequently, the CEO of the Gas Company in Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Governorate announced the resumption of gas transmission along the affected line near the city of Burojen.
“The enemy’s plan was to completely disrupt the flow of gas in winter to several main cities and provinces in our country,” Iran’s oil minister, Javad Owji, told Iranian media on Friday.
Mr. Owji, who had previously referred to the blasts as “sabotage and terrorist attacks,” stopped short of publicly blaming Israel or any other culprit. But he said that the goal of the attack was to damage Iran’s energy infrastructure and stir domestic discontent.
