The sabotage was aimed at disrupting the natural gas supply, Iran’s oil minister says
Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji at an OPEC event in Vienna, Austria on July 5, 2023. © Alex Halada / AFP
The explosions at two Iranian gas pipelines last week were an Israeli plot, the Islamic republic’s oil minister, Javad Owji, has said.
According to Iranian officials, the twin blasts occurred in the country’s central Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province, and the southern Fars province. The authorities described the incidents at the time as sabotage.
The “explosion of the gas pipeline was an Israeli plot,” Owji said on Wednesday, as quoted by the Washington Post. “The enemy intended to disturb gas service in the provinces and put people’s gas distribution at risk.”
Israel did not comment on the allegations. The Jewish state rarely acknowledges its operations abroad and has accused Iran of using Hamas and other militant Islamist groups in the region to stage attacks against it.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters last month that Israel was “attacking” the Islamic republic, as well as its “proxies.”
Tehran has denied that it was behind the deadly Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7, which left some 1,200 people dead and kick-started Israel’s ongoing operation in the Gaza Strip. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, however, endorsed the raid into Israel as “legitimate defense of the Palestinian nation,” and promised to continue the support for the Palestinian cause.
