The ancient Persian system of irrigating the trees on the boulevards of Tehran – the drinks– ditches that collect rainwater – burned in the early hours of this Sunday. Oil had begun to flow through these channels, after Israel had four crude oil deposits and a petroleum products transfer center in the provinces of Tehran and Alborz, as confirmed to the official IRNA agency by the executive director of the Iranian National Petroleum Products Distribution Company, Keramat Veis Karami.
In parallel, Israel has continued attacks against purely military targets. This Sunday it has also announced having bombed ammunition bunkers, a base of the Basij militia and the headquarters of the Space Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the unit of this powerful parallel army on which the Iranian missile and drone arsenal and the Iranian own-produced satellite program depend, including the Khayyamwhich, according to Israel, was used to monitor its territory.
At dawn, the explosions in the oil tanks caused enormous fireballs and acid rain that fell this Sunday on the capital, leaving black puddles, while dense clouds of smoke emanated from the fire in the tanks, which have burned for hours. The bombing has released large quantities of hydrocarbons, sulfur and nitrogen oxide, highly toxic products, into the skies over Tehran, the country’s Red Crescent has warned.
These attacks against oil deposits have not been the only ones in recent hours against infrastructure for civilian use, according to the Iranian Government. The country’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Aragchi, also accused on Saturday of having attacked a water desalination plant on the island of Qeshm, in the Persian Gulf, on which at least 30 towns depend for running water.
The bombings against the Iranian “energy infrastructure” open a “dangerous new phase” in the war, the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Iran, Esmaeil Baqaei, wrote this Sunday in X. This spokesman has accused the attackers of starting a “chemical war” against the Iranians that will extend beyond the country’s borders, he said, and that constitutes “war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, all at the same time.”
Iran has promised to respond similarly to these latest bombings. This Sunday, Bahrain has claimed that Iranian drones have attacked a water desalination plant, which has fueled fears that the red line that, according to international humanitarian law, should protect these facilities vital for the survival of the population, has already been crossed by the contenders in this war.
Meanwhile, in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the sirens warning of new attacks sounded again, shortly before loud explosions were heard, due to the arrival of missiles from Iran, as announced by the Israeli Government. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have in turn denounced new attacks with Iranian drones and missiles. One of these unmanned aircraft caused a large fire when it crashed into a high-rise building that houses government offices in the capital of Kuwait.
The Iraq precedent
These first known Israeli attacks against Iran’s oil infrastructure expand the objectives of this contest and point to the destruction of the economic fabric of a country that remembers with fear the disastrous precedent of one of its neighbors: Iraq.
In 1991, then-US Secretary of State James Baker predicted that Iraq would be bombed “back to pre-industrial times.” UNICEF later calculated that 43 days of bombing had generated losses of 232 billion dollars (172 billion euros) in the 1990s. Post-war electricity generation plummeted to 4% of pre-conflict levels.
Bomb facilities such as a water purification plant, according to international humanitarian law. On Saturday, Israel had already attacked the Tehran dual-use civil and military airport of Mehrabad, from which many internal flights depart from the country’s capital.
Another fear now is that these first attacks will be followed by others of greater magnitude, likely to devastate the oil industry, which provides Iran with around 25% of its income, according to the World Bank. Israel and the United States have not hit, at least for now, the island of Jarg, where the main crude oil loading terminal for export tankers is located. Nor the fields where black gold flows in the province of Khuzestan, next to the border with Iraq, nor refineries such as those in Bandar Abbas, Abadan or Isfahan.
Although Iran has the third largest oil reserves in the world, the harsh sanctions regime against the country has limited its exports of this hydrocarbon, which only constitute between 2% and 5% of the world total.
However, it is considered a “latent giant”, whose future elimination from the markets, together with Iranian attacks on the oil infrastructure of the producing countries of the Persian Gulf – and the interruption of oil tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz – could raise crude oil prices even to 150 dollars (130 euros) a barrel, when it is now paid for about 80 dollars.
The target chosen this Saturday to attack was some warehouses near a city where, if the metropolitan area is included, 16 million people live and which serve to store gasoline for local distribution.
One of these warehouses, Shahran, supplies the vehicles of the Revolutionary Guard personnel – the Iranian parallel army – but also the transport network for goods such as food and public buildings in Tehran. This Sunday, Iran has reduced the liters of fuel that each inhabitant of the capital can buy from 30 to 20, according to state television, which has attributed this restriction to the bombing of warehouses.
The day before, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the Iranians and assured that his country seeks to “liberate Iran,” in a speech released by his office. The Israeli army’s X account in Persian has assured that the attack on the warehouses “was not intended to harm the people of Iran.”
Shortly before, Yair Lapid, had posted a message on social media in which he urged his country to “destroy all of Iran’s oil fields and energy industry on the island of Kharg.” “That is what will ruin Iran’s economy and overthrow the regime,” he added.
Danny Citrinowicz, former head of the Iran section in the Research and Analysis Division of Israel’s military intelligence services, summed up his government’s position on Iran in an article last Wednesday: “If we can stage a coup, great. If we can get people out on the streets, great. If we can cause a civil war, great.” This Israeli expert concluded: “Israel doesn’t care about the future… [o] the stability of Iran.”
Internal tensions
As Iran faces the second week of war, the authorities of the Islamic Republic are transmitting, through statements by their officials, that the announcement of the successor to Ali Khamenei, whom the United States and Israel killed on February 28, is imminent. Several members of the Assembly of Experts – the body of 88 clerics formally charged with appointing the new leader – have assured Iranian media that a successor has already been chosen, although they have not publicly revealed his name.
That election will be a sign of continuity that would mitigate the image of internal tensions within the political-military apparatus that were evident this Saturday in the midst of the escalation of the war. The controversy began with a televised video in which the Iranian president. Masud Pezeshkián declared that Iran would stop attacking the neighboring countries of the Persian Gulf and even apologized for it. It did not take long for him to be disavowed by the security and military establishment and by the National Security Council.
Even Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, head of the judiciary and member of the transitional triumvirate – of which Pezeshkián is also a part – that formally governs the regime, has assured that the attacks against these objectives of the countries in the region will continue with intensity. He then stressed that the Iranian State is the main institutions of the regime.
The Iranian authorities are thus trying to close ranks also with their population. In the last few hours, many Iranians have received messages on their mobile phones sent from channels linked to the Armed Forces and structures close to the judiciary in which, implicitly, the conciliatory tone of the Iranian president is denied.
Meanwhile, international pressure on Iran increases. The Arab League this Sunday condemned the Iranian attacks on the Gulf countries and reaffirmed its right to defend itself against what it called “cowardly aggressions” at the end of an emergency meeting at the request of Saudi Arabia. Several regional analysts have warned of the possibility that these countries will form an Arab coalition that will join the attacks against Iran if this country continues to attack its neighbors.
A statement from the Emirates Ministry of Foreign Affairs states this Sunday that Iran has launched more than 1,400 missiles and drones against infrastructure and civilian targets in that country, which reserves the right to take “all necessary measures” to protect its sovereignty.
At the same time, Tehran faces another source of tension in the Caucasus. Azerbaijan, a close ally of Turkey and Israel, has warned Iran that it reserves the right to respond to Iranian drone attacks against the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhchivan.
