By Benoit Faucon
Iran's South Pars isn't just a gas field -- it is the heart and lungs of an Iranian economy that relies heavily on domestic supplies of natural gas for pretty much everything needed to keep the country ticking.
"The strike is not just an energy event," said Nima Shokri, an environmental expert at Hamburg University of Technology in Germany. "It is a systemic shock that moves through the infrastructure of everyday life, from power plants to irrigation canals, and ultimately to food security."
Israel's attack on a processing plant connected to the gas field -- the biggest in the world -- prompted Iran to retaliate with strikes on energy facilities across the Persian Gulf, inflicting heavy damage on natural-gas projects run by Qatar, which shares ownership of the gas field -- known as North Field in Qatar -- with Iran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the country would show "ZERO restraint if our infrastructures are struck again."
Natural gas supplies the bulk of "Iran's electricity, supports residential heating and cooking, and underpins a significant industrial sector," said Fernando Ferreira, a geopolitical analyst at Washington-based energy-research firm Rapidan Energy. The threat to Iran's lifeline "removes the internal constraint on hitting critical Gulf energy infrastructure," he said.
President Trump acknowledged South Pars's importance to Iran late Wednesday, saying Israel wouldn't attack the field again. But he warned on social media that if Iran continued to strike Qatar's energy facilities, the U.S. would "massively blow up the entirety" of the field.
Flows from the South Pars complex have continued and the country isn't facing shortages yet, Iranian officials say. But they say the attack has damaged storage and processing units.
Already, the damage forced Iran to suspend several of the 24 production projects at South Pars, cutting the equivalent of 22% of Iran's natural-gas demand in March, said Iman Nasseri, the Middle East managing director at energy consulting firm FGE NexantECA. The reductions will affect supply to petrochemical plants and power stations, and potentially exports to Iraq and Turkey, he said.
In a note to clients, Rapidan Energy estimates 20% of the Asaluyeh onshore complex has been destroyed, "a deliberate choice for maximum damage" compared with a strike on remote, inland pressure-boosting stations along pipelines.
The war has triggered a major energy supply shock, pushing oil prices above $100 a barrel as Iran blocked most exports of crude oil and liquefied natural gas through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has also attacked ships and key export facilities in its Persian Gulf neighbors in response to U.S.-Israeli attacks.
A U.S. attack hit military facilities at Kharg Island -- Iran's biggest crude export terminal -- and an earlier Israeli attack struck fuel storage tanks at a Tehran refinery.
But the strike on South Pars exposed Tehran's biggest vulnerability: its dependency on natural gas to keep powering its homes, factories and even its water pumps. It also takes square aim at a fossil fuel that is the cornerstone of an energy policy designed to mitigate the Western sanctions imposed for its nuclear program.
Iran can't export liquefied natural gas. That would require specialist technologies U.S. and European companies are barred from selling to the Islamic Republic. Only small quantities are transported by pipeline to Iraq and Turkey.
Instead, Tehran has chosen to make natural gas -- 80% of which comes from South Pars -- the fuel of its economy, providing for almost all the heating used in Iranian homes. Many Iranian cars are powered with compressed natural gas, for which the country ranks third worldwide, with 2,500 CNG stations.
The commodity is also the main feedstock for Iran's petrochemical industry -- used to produce anything from plastics to fertilizers -- that now generates over $17 billion a year, almost half its non-oil exports.
But most crucially, natural gas fuels 79% of Iran's electricity, according to the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based watchdog that advises industrialized nations on energy. In contrast, refined products cover almost half of the needs of electricity plants in neighboring petrostates.
Even before this week's strike, Iran had struggled to produce enough natural gas to keep the country fully switched on after years of sanctions and mismanagement. In the past year, massive power shortages forced the shutdown of government offices, schools and universities while disrupting production at dozens of cement and pharmaceutical plants.
The power cuts are also threatening food and water security. Some poultry and meatpacking plants have been forced to work at reduced capacity, officials have previously said.
But experts say a major disruption to natural-gas production would have a ripple effect on agriculture. Crops are already suffering from water shortages due to climate change and dam construction. Without gas from the South Pars, there are few means to power the pumps and irrigation networks Iranian farmers rely on, said Shokri, the university researcher.
"Crops are highly sensitive to when water is delivered, so even short outages can translate into yield losses and crop failure," he said.
Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 20, 2026 10:00 ET (14:00 GMT)
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