2024-02-17T05:33:04+00:00
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/ An American report revealed on Saturday that Israel carried out secret attacks inside Iran this week, targeting two major natural gas pipelines, which disrupted the flow of cooking and heating gas to provinces inhabited by millions.
A report by the American newspaper, The New York Times, was based on this information, quoting Western officials and a military strategist affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Explosions from the attacks occurred around 1 a.m. local time on Wednesday, sending residents into panic as they fled their homes and poured into the streets, according to Iranian media.
The attacks targeted several points along two major gas pipelines in Fars and Chahar Mahal Bakhtiari provinces, but the outage extended to homes, government buildings and major factories in at least five provinces across Iran.
Pipelines carry gas from the south to major cities such as Tehran and Isfahan, and one runs all the way to Astara, a city near the northern border with Azerbaijan.
The strikes represent a significant shift in the shadow war that Israel and Iran have been waging for years by air, land and sea, including cyberattacks.
Israel has long targeted military and nuclear sites in Iran, carried out assassinations of nuclear scientists and experts inside and outside the country, and has also launched cyber attacks to disable servers belonging to the Oil Ministry, causing disruptions at gas stations across Iran.
But officials and analysts told The New York Times that the bombing of parts of Iran’s energy infrastructure, on which industries and millions of civilians depend, represents an escalation in the covert war, and appears to open a new front in conflict parallel to the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.