By Andrew Mills and Trevor Hunnicutt<\/p>\n
DOHA\/WASHINGTON, March 19 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he had told Israel not to repeat its attacks on Iranian natural gas infrastructure as tit-for-tat strikes on energy plants sent energy prices spiralling, sharply escalating the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.<\/p>\n
Trump’s comment came as energy prices jumped sharply higher on Thursday after Iran responded to \u200can Israeli attack on a major gas field by hitting Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, which processes around a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas, causing damage that will take years to \u200crepair.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia’s main port on the Red Sea, where it has been able to divert some exports to avoid Iran’s closure of the Gulf’s exit point, the Strait of Hormuz, was also attacked.<\/p>\n
The strikes underscored Iran’s continued ability to exact a heavy price for the U.S.-Israeli \u200bcampaign, and the limits of air defences in protecting the Gulf’s most valuable and strategic energy assets.<\/p>\n
Trump, politically vulnerable to rising fuel prices among his core voters, has lashed out at allies who have responded cautiously to his demands that they help secure the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for around a fifth of the world’s oil.<\/p>\n
But he said he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to repeat the attack on energy infrastructure.<\/p>\n
“I told him, ‘Don’t do that’, and he won’t do that,” he told reporters in the Oval Office, where he met Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.<\/p>\n
A U.S. official and three other people familiar with the planning told Reuters that Trump was considering sending thousands more \u200cU.S. troops to the Middle East. But at his meeting with Takaichi, Trump \u2060said he had no plans to deploy ground forces.<\/p>\n
“I’m not putting troops anywhere,” he said.<\/p>\n
ENERGY CRISIS ESCALATES<\/p>\n
With no end in sight almost three weeks into the war, and the threat of a global “oil shock” growing by the day, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan issued a joint statement expressing “our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts \u2060to ensure safe passage through the Strait”.<\/p>\n
They also promised “other steps to stabilise energy markets, including working with certain producing nations to increase output”.<\/p>\n
The statement offered no details and there was little indication of any immediate move, with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reiterating that any contribution to securing the strait would come only after hostilities ended.<\/p>\n
The resistance by major U.S. allies to becoming involved in the war reflects scepticism over a conflict European leaders have said has unclear objectives that they did not seek \u200band \u200bover which they have little control.<\/p>\n
In particular, Israel’s bombing of Iran’s South Pars gas field, which Trump said the U.S. had \u200bnot known about, suggested gaps in coordination of strategy and war aims between the \u200cmain protagonists.<\/p>\n
Adding to the confusion around the attack, three Israeli officials said the operation had taken place in consultation with the United States, but was unlikely to be repeated.<\/p>\n
Earlier, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a briefing that U.S. objectives in the war, which has so far killed more than 2,000 people, mostly in Iran and Lebanon, were “unchanged, on target and on plan”.<\/p>\n
But Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told the House intelligence committee that U.S. and Israeli goals differed:<\/p>\n
“…the Israeli government has been focused on disabling the Iranian leadership. The president has stated that his objectives are to destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles launching capability, their ballistic missile production capability, and their navy.”<\/p>\n
QATAR LOSES A SIXTH OF GAS EXPORTS<\/p>\n
Iran’s military said strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure had led to “a new stage in the war” in which it had attacked energy facilities linked to the United States.<\/p>\n
“If strikes (on Iran’s energy facilities) \u200chappen again, further attacks on your energy infrastructure and that of your allies will not stop until it is completely destroyed,” \u200bspokesman Ebrahim Zolfaqari said, according to state media.<\/p>\n
QatarEnergy’s CEO told Reuters the Iranian attacks had knocked out a sixth of Qatar’s LNG \u200bexport capacity, worth $20 billion a year, and that repairs would take three to five years.<\/p>\n
Israeli media reported \u200bthat an Iranian strike hit oil facilities in Israel’s port of Haifa, causing damage but no casualties.<\/p>\n
Since Wednesday, Iranian attacks have also forced the UAE to shut its Habshan \u200cgas facility and set off fires at two Kuwaiti oil refineries.<\/p>\n
Brent crude oil futures \u200bwere up nearly 3% at $110.35 at 1700 GMT, having \u200bsurged up to 10% before the joint statement. European near-term gas prices were up more than 15%, and have leapt by over 60% since the war began. [O\/R]<\/p>\n
Japanese and South Korean stocks fell around 3% while the pan-European index was down 2.3%, around its lowest in more than three months. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down about 1%. [.N] [MKTS\/GLOB]<\/p>\n
Fears of lasting inflation pressures encouraged both the \u200bEuropean Central Bank and Bank of England to hold rates steady, and investors \u200cwho once expected cuts were pricing in hikes by year-end. The ECB now sees 2026 inflation at 2.6%, above the 1.9% predicted in December.<\/p>\n
At a summit in Brussels, European Union leaders sought \u200bways to offset higher energy costs for industries and consumers already struggling with the rising cost of living.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Andrew Mills in Doha and Timour Azhari in Riyadh; Additional reporting \u200bby Reuters bureaus; Writing by Kevin Liffey and James Mackenzie; Editing by Jon Boyle, Ros Russell and Aidan Lewis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Andrew Mills and Trevor Hunnicutt DOHA\/WASHINGTON, March 19 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[171958,84,141,1294,1344,3712,63492,585,9084,86762,163474,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-484397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-andrew-mills","tag-business","tag-donald-trump","tag-economy","tag-energy","tag-energy-infrastructure","tag-gas-prices","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-sanae-takaichi","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}