Strikes on South Pars–Ras Laffan Gas Megahubs Ignite Gulf-Wide Energy War

Energy infrastructure has rarely been targeted this directly since the 1984-88 ‘Tanker War,’ when attacks on Gulf shipping cut OPEC exports by nearly 5 Mb/d; in 1973 the Arab oil embargo weaponised supply but left production assets intact. The 2026 raids mark an escalation from harassing tanker traffic to disabling processing nodes that cannot be rebuilt quickly, reflecting a long-term strategic shift: states are now willing to cripple shared, capital-intensive assets to gain leverage in asymmetric conflicts. Over the past two decades LNG has grown from 8 % to roughly 20 % of global gas trade, concentrating risk in mega-hubs like Ras Laffan; striking them echoes how cyber attacks migrated from stealing data to knocking out physical plants (e.g., Stuxnet 2010). On a 100-year horizon this moment matters because it tests whether the post-1970s norm of insulating energy flows from frontline warfare can survive in an era of precision drones and great-power fragmentation—if not, markets may revisit the supply-insecurity premiums last seen before the 1956 Suez Crisis reshaped global energy logistics.