G'day, Middle East correspondent Matthew Doran with you again this morning, from Beirut. Here's today's daily update to get you up to speed with the latest happenings in the region.
It seems like Iran has figured out the best way to unite the Gulf states — severely damage their ability to make money. Iran had issued a warning to the region that it would attack oil and gas infrastructure, after Israel aimed at the massive South Pars gas facility in Iran, partly owned by Qatar.
And the Iranian regime followed through on the threat. Ras Laffan in Qatar, which processes around a fifth of the world's LNG supplies, suffered extensive damage in an Iranian strike.
Repairs at the site could take years, according to Qatar Energy, which runs the site, and cut $US20 billion ($28 billion) from the company's coffers. Qatar's prime minister rejected claims from Iran that US-linked facilities had been targeted, and said the war needed to stop immediately.
It's clear the situation is rattling even the White House, as much as President Donald Trump can be rattled. He took to his Truth Social platform to distance himself from the original Israeli strike on 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," he posted. Although, in Trump-style, he did then threaten that the US would attack the site again if Iran launched further strikes on Qatari infrastructure.
Shot, chaser.
Reuters soon reported that the US was aware it was going to happen. The suggestion is that Trump is trying to keep the Qataris and Gulf states onside by using a bit of plausible/semi-plausible/perhaps not very plausible deniability.
The president later said he'd told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to launch further attacks.
That may well be the case. He's one of the few people who has sway over Netanyahu, although Israel has clearly pursued a lot of its own agenda in this war — as evidenced by testimony before Congress by the Trump administration's Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard:
| "The objectives that have been laid out by the president are different from the objectives that have been laid out by the Israeli government," she said.
"We can see through the operations that the Israeli government has been focused on disabling the Iranian leadership. The president has stated that his objectives are to destroy Iran's ballistic missile launching capability, its ballistic missile production capability, and its navy."
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Thanks for joining me. You can keep track of the latest updates from Iran and around the world throughout the day via our live blog.
