Israel’s Attack on South Pars: Three Voices on Gas Infrastructure, Workers’ Lives, and War
Three experts reflect on the strike on Asaluyeh, warning of deepening hardship for workers, economic disruption, and a widening regional crisis.
Following Israel’s attack on gas and petrochemical facilities in the Asaluyeh region of Bushehr Province on 27 Esfand 1404 (March 18, 2026), parts of phases 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the South Pars gas field — the world’s largest gas field — were hit. Domestic media reported fires in storage tanks and operational zones, the evacuation of workers to safe areas, and efforts by emergency teams to contain the blaze.
American media outlets, including Axios, cited Israeli officials attributing responsibility for the strike to the Israeli air force and stressing that the operation had been carried out with a “green light” from the United States. Less than a day later, however, Donald Trump denied that claim.
On Thursday, the U.S. president, while saying he had not been informed of Israel’s strike on South Pars the previous day, warned Iran that if attacks on Qatar continued, Washington would “destroy the entirety of the South Pars facilities with unprecedented force.” He added: “I do not desire that level of destruction, but if such attacks are repeated, I will not hesitate.”
This attack has threatened not only a vital pillar of Iran’s economy — one on which 70 percent of domestic gas consumption and 40 percent of the country’s petrochemical production depend — but has also triggered regional and global chain reactions: from the jump in Brent crude above $108 and West Texas Intermediate to nearly $98, to the complete cutoff of gas exports to Iraq, which had supplied 30 to 40 percent of that country’s energy needs, and serious warnings from Qatar and the UAE about a “threat to global energy security.” On the other side, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a statement placing the SAMREF and Jubail refineries in Saudi Arabia, the al-Hosn gas field in the UAE, and key facilities in Qatar in its sights, and called on citizens to leave those areas immediately.
In these circumstances, Radio Zamaneh spoke with three specialists in labor history, labor organizing, and economics to examine the consequences of this strike for economic infrastructure, workers’ livelihoods, and regional stability.
After the January uprising of 1404 (December 2025–January 2026), and the ensuing internet blackout and communications shutdown, Radio Zamaneh resumed broadcasting.
Officially, from 1 Bahman 1404 (January 21, 2026), every night from 23:00 Iran time, for 30 minutes, Zamaneh’s news and analysis bulletin has been available to everyone over radio waves, and immediately after it ends it is rebroadcast once more until 24:00. Radio Zamaneh is broadcast on shortwave (SW), on the 49-meter band, at 6010 kilohertz.
Peyman Jafari: The strike reveals the real aim of the war
Peyman Jafari, a researcher of modern Iranian history who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the social history of the oil industry, believes that the strike on Asaluyeh reveals the “real aim of the war”:
“The attack on Iran’s gas and petrochemical industry in Asaluyeh makes the aim of the Israeli and American war completely clear. That aim is not regime change; they are seeking the destruction of Iran’s economic infrastructure and its social collapse. Construction of the industrial facilities in Asaluyeh began in 1377 (1998) in order to exploit the South Pars gas field. South Pars is the largest gas field in the world and supplies 70 percent of Iran’s domestic gas consumption. Over the past two decades, Asaluyeh has also become the heart of Iran’s petrochemical industry, producing more than 40 percent of the country’s total petrochemical output. Asaluyeh is the product of the labor of workers who, under the harshest conditions, built these gas and petrochemical facilities and in past years repeatedly went on strike for their rights. Through their protests and statements, they openly supported the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ uprising and other protests. But today, those very workers in Asaluyeh were at work when they were confronted with bombardment and toxic gases, and the residents of this region will have to live with the environmental consequences of this war for years to come. In the short term as well, the attack on Asaluyeh has deadly consequences. With the possibility of Iranian retaliation, the war enters a new phase, and the cycle of violence will widen through the targeting of oil industries.”
Mehdi Ghodsi: Immediate economic consequences
Mehdi Ghodsi, an economist, outlined the immediate economic consequences of the attack for Iran. Stressing that 70 to 80 percent of Iran’s gas comes from South Pars, he said:
“A reduction in exports of gas and gas condensates, together with the effect of gas shortages on people’s livelihoods and on the supply of feedstock for petrochemicals, will affect the production of essential goods and drive prices upward. Forecasting the inflation rate over the next six months depends on the type of damage that has been inflicted on South Pars. If the damage is to storage units or reservoirs, these can be refilled after repairs. But if production equipment has been damaged, production stops completely until reconstruction is completed and operations resume.
Given that 70 to 80 percent of Iran’s gas comes from South Pars, a complete halt in these phases would cause widespread disruption across the country. It is not only industry that uses gas; residential households and basic infrastructure services, especially in the cold days of winter, also depend on it. As a result, the domestic gas supply would fall sharply, and gas exports, including to Iraq, could drop to zero. Priority is always given to domestic consumption, and depending on how long repairs and reconstruction take, the period of reduced supply could be short-term or long-term.
If this situation drags on, gas shortages will obstruct electricity generation and other infrastructural services, and economic activity will effectively grind to a halt. Even in a scenario in which the damage reduces only 10 percent of the country’s gas production, limited reserves mean supply shortages will emerge and the economy will be hit by severe inefficiency. Although government subsidies may prevent a dramatic rise in gas prices, the fuel shortage itself will cause economic stagnation, and the longer this condition continues, the deeper the recession and the broader the poverty will become.
The government and public sector, which together manage roughly 80 to 85 percent of the country’s economy, will also face budget deficits and may resort to printing money to finance expenditures — something that will intensify inflation. The inflationary scenario arising from these events could be far higher than the 60 to 80 percent previously discussed, and would be accompanied by a rising exchange rate and further increases in the prices of goods. In these conditions, the most important challenge will be shortages of goods and services, and these shortages will be felt by people more sharply than any increase in energy prices. In conditions of crisis and war, it is also likely that the government will use harsher methods to manage the situation.”
Jalal Saeedi: War pushes labor and popular movements backward
Jalal Saeedi, a labor activist, spoke with Zamaneh about the immediate effects of this war on the workforce. Stressing that physical safety comes before any economic discussion, he said:
“The reality is that when war begins, it essentially pushes politics — and especially labor and workplace organizing — to the margins and wears them down.
This war has heavy consequences for popular movements, especially the labor movement, and in fact the first thing that prevents them from pursuing their demands is the major blow inflicted on this sector. Naturally, at the start of a war — and especially the war we are witnessing now — conditions were already very bad for the lower classes as a whole, and this situation will become even worse. Wage arrears and dismissals are already happening on a large scale. These dismissals, and the situation as a whole, push the popular movement backward. That has very concrete consequences.
As for the specific situation in Asaluyeh, the initial explosions seem to show that a new phase of the war has begun, one that could create a crisis in the region and globally. If attacks on production facilities in Saudi Arabia and Qatar are also carried out by the Islamic Republic, then a state of crisis will in fact emerge across the world. Targeting gas fields and even chemical storage facilities has many consequences for agriculture. Chemical fertilizer — a large part of the Northern Hemisphere, a large part of the world, now depends on fertilizers derived from this gas. This attack affects global agriculture itself and will have many consequences, the heaviest of which will fall on countries like ours, which are already facing all-encompassing crises.
As for the energy sector, fortunately gas production — which is also a major source of the country’s electricity generation — has not yet completely stopped. But if conditions continue in this direction, then this becomes an all-encompassing crisis. A country that is already sanctioned from all sides and in crisis will, in practice, face total power failure. We can already see what that means in places dependent on oil, what horrifying blackouts exist now under the sanctions imposed on Cuba.
This shows clearly what devastating consequences this war has, and how all those claims we hear about oil sales and helping the people reveal the terrible damage that has been done to people’s livelihoods, their lives, and fundamentally to their struggles for their rights.”
In war, physical safety comes before job security
The reality is that before we even get to job security, the first thing raised in wartime conditions is physical safety. It is obvious that despite all the claims that they want to target the regime’s leaders, or change the regime, or help the people of Iran achieve more freedom and more rights, the main victims are these ordinary people whose schools, hospitals, homes, and worst of all workplaces — whether under the name of industrial zones, oil regions, or anything else — are being targeted.
The first victims are the workers and laborers who work there and whose lives are put in danger. Naturally, their livelihoods and job security also come under question. Not only in that region, but across the whole region. A large share of energy production across these neighboring states is tied to the same vulnerable regional infrastructure.
Production has been disrupted, and the first blow — the cost of it, really — is placed on the shoulders of those same workers and laborers who are there. When they strike these areas, the issue is not only what consequences follow for the infrastructure being destroyed, but also that the lives of the workers and laborers there are, first of all, placed in danger, and this creates immediate anxiety.
More than worrying about what will happen in the future, we have to see what is happening to people right now. As I said earlier, this has suspended and pushed back the popular movement as a whole — the movement for people’s rights, the movement against a regime that has deprived people in every sense, both in terms of freedoms and in terms of livelihood. From this perspective, it is clear that our priority cannot be to ask what reconstruction might look like in the future. That depends on what system replaces the current one.
Will the Islamic Republic remain, through repression? Will the regime change? Or will major powers such as the United States or Israel impose another government, one that naturally will be less concerned with people’s interests, infrastructure, livelihoods, and job security than with securing its own interests? That is where we have to begin. If there is defeat, if the fall of the Islamic Republic comes as the result of war, how will their interests be secured? And once again, people’s interests will be sacrificed. This war strikes hardest at economic infrastructure — at places like the South Pars region — which can have a direct impact on the daily bread and livelihood of every worker and laboring person.”
What kind of postwar future — and for whom?
If we focus on what happens after the war, as I said, that really depends on how the war proceeds and who comes to power — that is, what kind of government is established afterward. Right now, it is not clear who will hold power in Iran in the future, or how. Only then will it become possible to understand how they will govern and whether they will create better conditions, or at least somewhat better conditions, for people.
A situation may emerge that puts even greater pressure on the people of Iran, in the interests of the countries that have now entered this war with clearly defined interests. Right now it is impossible to say with precision. We have to see what consequences this war will produce. If it ends as quickly as possible… though it would have been far better if it had never happened at all. The interests of the people, and the interests of workers, lay in this war never taking place. Naturally, this war will intensify all the crises we have had up to now. People’s livelihoods will come under greater pressure in every sphere. The dinner table will shrink. Goods will become more expensive.
Everything will be affected by this war to the detriment of people’s livelihoods. And even if a government comes to power by the people themselves, or a government that is not imposed, it will still be extremely difficult to restore the infrastructure that has been destroyed. It will be very difficult to create acceptable conditions for people’s livelihoods and lives again any time soon. It may take many long years, with all the destruction this war creates, before a normal condition of life can be restored.
And that is only on the condition that regime change happens by the people themselves and that they participate in shaping Iran’s future. Otherwise, if other countries intervene — as in Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere — and if the kind of ‘help’ they say is on the way arrives, then we have already seen what that looks like in practice. Many years after war in Iraq, large parts of the population no longer even have access to the drinking water they had under Saddam.
So that ideal picture in which people say, after the war, reconstruction will come, all of this remains, in reality, at the level of slogans and is not easily achievable. In the end, I have to say that, unfortunately, conservatives who have always blocked the popular movement, blocked the real popular movement, have always been more of an obstacle to people’s actual struggles than a force for a better future. And now they are applauding this war.
In reality, its consequences do not matter to them. They certainly will not be thinking about the lower classes, the working class, or their future conditions and livelihoods.” If you want, I can now help you choose the strongest order and title style for all four newsletter pieces so the issue feels coherent front to back.
Israel’s Attack on South Pars: Three Voices on Gas Infrastructure, Workers’ Lives, and War #Israel #GasAttack
0
0
0
0
