📝 🇮🇷 🇸🇦 Iran’s missiles and drones have hit Gulf infrastructure sites at least 135 times, causing cascading failures that governments have often concealed.

Iran has targeted infrastructure across the Gulf Arab countries – in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain. In all, the Islamic Republic has launched at least 135 drone and missile attacks on at least 84 infrastructure sites in the Gulf since the US and Israel launched a bombing campaign against Iran on February 28, Reuters found.

The attacks have spread fear across the Gulf, sent oil prices soaring and helped Iran blunt months of American military pressure. Coupled with the Islamic Republic’s blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, the ability to launch precision attacks creates an enduring threat to its Gulf Arab neighbors and gives Iran huge sway over the global economy and leverage in its peace negotiations with the US.

Ryan Stevens, a former US Marine Corps special operations airstrike coordinator who reviewed Reuters’ findings, said Iran’s strikes showed “precision, targeting expertise, and patience.”

Some places suffered periods of near-daily bombardment and face billions of dollars in repairs and lost revenue. Others, like one of the world’s largest aluminum smelters in Abu Dhabi, were devastated in a single day. Some of the attacks were carried out by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen and the Iraqi Shiite militias controlled from Tehran.

Among those hit the most was the Fujairah port, whose location just south of Hormuz allowed the UAE to bypass Iran’s blockade. The port served as a life raft for global trade by easing the most severe disruption to oil supplies in decades.

In all, Reuters found that Iranian drones and missiles have struck Fujairah at least 19 times since the war began on February 28, crippling critical pieces of its operations.

“They are targeting our infrastructure,” said Al Jaber, who is also the UAE minister of industry and advanced technology. “But what they're really targeting is our way of life.”

That same year, a secret US Central Intelligence Agency assessment found Iran was likely to respond to perceived threats with attacks on energy infrastructure in Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. That assessment, released in 2019, found that “even a few attacks against well-chosen targets could do considerable damage to Gulf oil facilities.”

US officials believe Iran may have received intelligence from Russia and China. In addition, Iran relies upon networks of informants with access to sensitive sites to pass along photos and location information, according to three officials familiar with the issue – one from Iran and two in the Gulf.

Oil and gas exports function as a system – from wells that extract, to pipelines that transport across hundreds of kilometers, to refineries that process, to ports where ships can load cargo bound for global markets.

In Saudi Arabia, the Gulf’s largest petrostate, this web offers an almost inexhaustible number of targets – a weakness that has been flagged repeatedly over decades, including in the 1983 CIA report. The kingdom produces around 10% of the world’s crude as well as natural gas and petrochemicals.

Nearly all of Saudi Arabia’s oil exports flow through two main ports. The largest share typically flows through its Ras Tanura port on the Gulf. But the kingdom can also export oil from the large King Fahd Industrial Port in Yanbu, the largest on the Red Sea coast.

When the war started, Yanbu and the East-West Pipeline leading to it became a critical outlet for Saudi oil to avoid Hormuz. Most ships that sail from the Red Sea port must instead pass Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen and the narrow Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

In March and April, more than 1,000 kilometers from the Iranian border, drones hit Yanbu at least twice, according to two industry sources familiar with the operations.

The Iranians hit Saudi Aramco Mobil Refinery Limited's Yanbu Refinery with a drone on March 19, limiting production to about 70% of capacity until April 9, said Hillary Stevenson, vice president of energy intelligence at IIR Energy. Scorch marks appeared in a satellite image of Yanbu from around that date, but Reuters could not determine what precisely was hit at the refinery.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/iran-crisis-infrastructure-attacks/