Senior visiting fellow, George Mason University
Israel’s strikes on Iran’s gas facilities mark a shift in the conflict from military confrontation to economic warfare centered on energy.
On March 18, Israeli strikes targeted facilities linked to South Pars and the onshore hub at Asaluyeh in Bushehr Province.
Qatar, which shares the reservoir, directly blamed Israel, while the United Arab Emirates branded the attack a "dangerous escalation" threatening global energy security.
Tehran responded with a swift call for the evacuation of energy infrastructure across the Persian Gulf, including in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
South Pars is not simply another hydrocarbon asset. Together with Qatar’s North Dome, it forms the world’s largest natural gas field, holding an estimated 1,800 trillion cubic feet of gas and 50 billion barrels of condensate.
Iran’s share accounts for roughly 36 percent of its proven gas reserves and about 5.6 percent of global reserves, placing a central pillar of its economy at risk.
Asaluyeh serves as the operational core of this system, concentrating upstream, midstream and downstream infrastructure in a single coastal zone. Offshore production feeds into refineries, petrochemical complexes and export terminals that underpin Iran’s electricity generation, industrial base and energy exports.
This concentration creates both efficiency and vulnerability. A strike on Asaluyeh does not merely disrupt production; it threatens the entire value chain.
Positioned along the Persian Gulf and connected to export routes through the Strait of Hormuz, Asaluyeh sits at the intersection of production and transit. Any sustained disruption could compound supply shocks across global markets.
Israel has moved beyond military and nuclear assets to strike the economic core of Iran’s power, signaling a shift toward economic attrition in which energy systems become primary targets.
Iran’s response suggests escalation will not remain contained. Outlets linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have published lists of potential targets: Ras Laffan and Mesaieed in Qatar, the SAMREF refinery and Jubail petrochemical complex in Saudi Arabia, and the Al Hosn gas field in the United Arab Emirates.
The fallout is already visible. Iraq has reported a halt in Iranian gas supplies following the strike on South Pars, while Ras Laffan installations in Qatar are being evacuated.
The shared nature of the reservoir raises additional risks. Qatar’s North Dome underpins a significant share of global LNG supply to Europe and Asia. Instability on the Iranian side introduces concerns over reservoir management, operational safety and spillover effects.
Qatar’s swift condemnation reflects a clear calculation: escalation around the world’s largest gas field threatens global markets as much as regional stability.
The risks extend beyond the Gulf. Israel’s offshore gas fields—Leviathan, Tamar and Karish—are critical to domestic supply and regional exports and remain exposed to potential retaliation. Expanding the conflict to the Eastern Mediterranean would transform a regional confrontation into a multi-basin energy crisis.
The strike also exposes a strategic asymmetry. Israel has limited comparable domestic energy infrastructure vulnerable to direct retaliation, while Iran operates within a region where energy assets are densely clustered.
Tehran cannot easily mirror the strike, but it can impose costs across a wider regional system by targeting Gulf producers, shipping lanes or offshore infrastructure.
The choice of South Pars and Asaluyeh therefore reflects more than tactical targeting. It marks a deliberate shift toward pressure on economic systems and systemic vulnerability.
The immediate damage may prove limited. The strategic consequences are not. Once energy infrastructure becomes a battlefield, escalation thresholds shift, retaliation broadens, and interconnected energy systems become more fragile.
South Pars is not just a gas field; it anchors Iran’s economy and links directly to global energy markets. By placing it in the crosshairs, the conflict has entered a phase in which local strikes carry global consequences.
That was the frame Khatib laid out in a long interview published on Ali Khamenei’s website during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. It became more than rhetoric. It became a governing logic that collapsed protest, foreign media, activism and espionage into one threat map.
Khatib’s career made him unusually suited to that task.
Born in 1961 and trained in Qom, he rose through the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence world, later ran the intelligence office in Qom, moved into the Supreme Leader’s protection orbit and then headed the judiciary’s protection and intelligence apparatus.
By the time Ebrahim Raisi made him intelligence minister in 2021, Khatib had passed through nearly every institution that mattered in the Islamic Republic’s coercive core: the Guards, the judiciary and the Supreme Leader’s household.
His retention in 2024 confirmed that his authority rested less on party politics than on trust from the system above elected government.
Under Khatib, the state increasingly treated social unrest as proof of foreign infiltration.
Protesters were not simply angry citizens. They were portrayed as nodes in an enemy network. Foreign-based Persian media were not just broadcasters. They were recast as operational arms of hostile states.
That logic also hardened into law.
Under his watch, the state broadened the definition of espionage and hostile collaboration, making it easier to turn contact, information-sharing, media work and loosely defined cooperation with enemy states or affiliated groups into national-security crimes.
The point was not only to punish spies. It was to widen the category of who could be treated like one.
The United States designated Khatib twice in September 2022, reflecting the breadth of his role across both overseas operations and domestic repression.
The Treasury first sanctioned him and the Intelligence Ministry over malicious cyber activity, including the disruption of Albanian government systems.
Later that month, it sanctioned him again, saying the ministry under his leadership had targeted human rights defenders, women’s rights activists, journalists, filmmakers and religious minorities, and had subjected detainees to torture in secret detention centers.
Years of the gallows
The intelligence ministry did not sign every death sentence. But the execution surge is still part of the meaning of Khatib’s tenure, because it formed the climate in which his security doctrine operated.
In the four full calendar years after he took office, Iran carried out at least 4,000 executions: about 580 in 2022, 830 in 2023, 975 in 2024 and 1,900 in 2025.
Those numbers belong formally to the judiciary and the prison system.
Politically, though, they sit inside the same larger story: a state that answered dissent, insecurity and social fracture with a heavier reliance on coercion, exemplary punishment and fear.
Operations beyond Iran
Khatib was also important beyond Iran’s borders. The ministry he led was accused by Western governments of directing cyber operations, targeting dissidents abroad and helping run the wider machinery of transnational repression.
His significance, though, was not that he was publicly tied to every individual plot.
It was that he sat atop a ministry that linked classic espionage, cyber activity, surveillance of exiles and operational cooperation with Iran’s other security arms.
In that sense he was less a field commander than a system manager, overseeing one part of Iran’s long war against opponents at home and abroad.
The glue
That coordinating role may be the most revealing part of his legacy.
Iran’s intelligence world is fragmented. The Intelligence Ministry, the IRGC Intelligence Organization, the judiciary and the Leader’s office all have their own stakes, rivalries and chains of command.
Khatib’s value was that he could move across those worlds.
He came from the Guards’ intelligence culture, served in the Leader’s protection orbit, worked closely with the judiciary and then ran the ministry that was supposed to give the system a more unified picture of the threat environment.
After the 2022 uprising, that became even more important.
The Islamic Republic needed its rival security organs to act less like competing fiefdoms and more like a single architecture.
Khatib helped provide that common language, one in which protest, activism, foreign media, exile politics, sabotage and espionage could all be placed on the same continuum of danger.
That is why Khatib mattered. He mattered because he helped normalize a broader idea: that almost any challenge to the Islamic Republic could be reclassified as infiltration.
In the end, that was his real achievement for the system he served. He helped make dissent legible as intelligence warfare.
Videos sent to Iran International showed crowds gathering in Tehran, Karaj, Shiraz, Mashhad and other cities, lighting fires, dancing and chanting slogans, including “Javid Shah,” in apparent response to calls by exiled prince Reza Pahlavi to mark the pre-Islamic festival despite restrictions.
In several locations, including Chitgar in western Tehran and parts of Karaj, security forces were seen attempting to disperse gatherings, with footage showing police vehicles approaching crowds.
But the celebrations persisted, with people singing patriotic songs such as “Ey Iran” and setting off fireworks in residential neighborhoods and public spaces.
Chaharshanbe Suri, traditionally held on the eve of last Wednesday of the Iranian calendar year, has long been viewed with suspicion by the Islamic Republic.
In recent years it has increasingly become a flashpoint for anti-government expression, particularly during periods of unrest.
This year’s celebrations unfolded against the backdrop of ongoing conflict and heightened security pressure, with reports of surveillance and efforts by authorities to deter gatherings.
Israeli support
“An unprecedented event took place last night, as Israeli drones targeted Basij and police patrols attempting to approach celebration sites,” an Israeli official told Iran International.
“For the first time, the people of Iran benefited from active support that paralyzed the repression apparatus and effectively provided an ‘air umbrella’ for the crowds,” the official said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier signaled support, saying in a video message that Israeli forces were targeting what he described as “terrorist operatives” to enable Iranians to celebrate.
“Our aircraft are striking terrorist elements in city squares and intersections to allow the brave people of Iran to celebrate the fire festival,” he said. “Celebrate. Happy Nowruz. We are watching from above.”
Mizan said Keyvani was executed on Wednesday morning after his death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court. He had been accused of passing “images and information of sensitive locations” to officers of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.
The report said Keyvani was arrested in Savojbolagh on the fourth day of the 12-day war in June. Authorities said the case had gone through legal procedures, but no independent evidence supporting the allegations was made public.
Later in the day, Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said in a statement that a Swedish citizen was executed in Iran without naming him. However, it confirmed that the person was arrested in June.
The legal proceedings leading up to the execution did not meet the standards of due process, she added.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency said Keyvani had been detained by the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence arm and was found with cash, vehicles and what it described as advanced communication and surveillance equipment.
Tasnim also reported that he had allegedly been recruited through online contact and trained abroad before returning to Iran, though these claims could not be independently verified.
Keyvani is the latest in a series of executions in Iran involving individuals accused of espionage for Israel, particularly since the outbreak of the June war.
Iran has one of the highest execution rates in the world and has long used the death penalty in national security cases, including allegations of spying. Following the conflict, rights groups and international media have reported a sharp increase in arrests and executions on such charges.
The Telegraph reported that executions in Iran have surged since the June war, citing data from human rights group HRANA indicating that the number of executions has risen significantly, including for those accused of links to Israel. The Sunday Times has also reported that dozens more people could face execution on similar charges.
