When Israel struck Iran's South Pars gas field, Tehran responded by targeting Qatar's liquefied natural gas infrastructure. The attack knocked out 17 percent of Qatar's LNG production capacity for an estimated three to five years. The exchange offers a concrete preview of how the U.S.-Iranian war escalates - and why each side's retaliatory logic drives the conflict further from resolution.
The dynamic is examined in detail by Ilan Goldenberg, a former Iran Team Chief at the Pentagon and ex-adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, in a new Foreign Affairs analysis, as "Hvylya" reports.
Iran has demonstrated "an acute awareness of U.S. sensitivity to oil prices," Goldenberg wrote. The Trump administration's own actions confirm this - Washington has gone as far as easing sanctions on Iranian oil to placate global energy markets, even while bombing the country. Tehran has recognized that energy markets are the pressure point where it holds leverage, and has a clear incentive to keep targeting them.
Goldenberg warned that further U.S. escalation would only amplify this dynamic. Trump threatened on March 22 to target Iran's power plants to compel a change in behavior. But rather than capitulating, Iran would more likely respond by striking similar civilian infrastructure in the Gulf states. The result would not be Iranian compliance but a widening circle of destruction across the region's energy sector.
The broader pattern, Goldenberg argued, mirrors what the U.S. faced in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if 90 percent of Iranian attacks are intercepted, the remaining ten percent can have outsize economic and psychological effects. "A single successful strike on a tanker, an oil facility, or a commercial hub ruffles global markets and alters perceptions of risk," he wrote. For Iran, that is enough - it does not need to win the war, only to demonstrate that the U.S. objective of regional stability is failing.
Previously: The US Is the World's Largest Oil Producer - Yet Remains Hostage to One Chokepoint.