Iranian officials say Israel carried out some of the drone strikes on Gulf energy sites
Exclusive: Iranian officials say Israel carried out some of the drone strikes on Gulf energy sites
Iranian officials have accused Israel of carrying out some of the drone strikes on energy and civilian sites in the Arabian Gulf, calling the attacks a calculated bid to spark regional fury and pull Arab states into the war on Tehran.
An Iranian foreign ministry official told Middle East Eye that Israel was behind several of the drone strikes against Saudi Arabia and claimed that they were also responsible for at least one of the attacks on Oman.
"I can categorically say that some of the attacks were not carried out by us [Iran]," the official, who requested anonymity, said.
The official declined to say which of the strikes Israel was responsible for, but Saudi Arabia has been struck at least five times by drones and missiles, with the Prince Sultan Air Base, the Ras Tanura oil refinery, and the US embassy in Riyadh among the facilities targeted.
Oman's Duqm Port has also been targeted twice, a sprawling site that the US Navy has had regular access to since 2019.
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The Iranian official declined to say whether any Iranian proxy group could have been involved, but as of Wednesday, Shia Iraqi groups have not carried out any cross-border attacks, limiting their response to US targets in Iraq instead.
Iran has been targeting US assets across the Middle East since Saturday, in retaliation for a huge joint attack by the US and Israel that resulted in the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
'[The attacks are] an Israeli effort to sabotage regional peace and alliances between neighbours'
- Iranian source
Initially, the first wave of attacks focused on US military assets, but Gulf states have reported that Iran has since broadened its scope to target civilian infrastructure, including hotels, airports, and energy facilities.
Iranian officials, however, have publicly denied targeting Gulf energy facilities.
The five-day conflict has severely damaged Saudi Arabia and Qatar's ability to export oil and gas and shattered Dubai's image as a safe haven for foreign expatriates.
Mossad operating on Iranian soil
Two other Iranian sources told MEE that Israel's foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, had carried out some of the drone attacks, adding that the Islamic Republic had detected their activity on Iranian soil.
They said that authorities were in the process of locating the warehouses used by the Mossad to store their drones and that Iran was committed to "taking them all out".
"We would not be surprised if there are such warehouses and operational rooms in other countries in the region that Israel would use to target our Gulf neighbours from," one of the sources said.
Mossad is known to have built up a deep network of agents, informants, and logistics in Iran, allowing Israel to carry out a series of attacks on high-value targets.
Previous attacks have included the assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist travelling at high speeds in a car on an isolated road with a remote-controlled automatic machine gun; malware attacks on computers running key parts of Iran’s nuclear programme; and the theft of an archive of nuclear documents.
Another Iranian source told MEE that amid the latest attacks, Iran had "made a clear statement" to Saudi Arabia that it was not behind the strikes on Saudi Aramco's Ras Tanura, which houses the kingdom's largest domestic refinery and is a key crude export terminal.
"This is an Israeli effort to sabotage regional peace and alliances between neighbours," the source added.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorised to speak with the media.
Pezeshkian: Iran is defending itself
The admissions could serve as a major source of embarrassment for Iran, a year after Israeli officials released footage that showed Mossad agents deep inside Iran assembling missiles and explosive drones.
But the remarks come at a time when Gulf Arab capitals are facing increasing US pressure to join the war effort against Tehran.
The calls, some of which are being led by the United Arab Emirates from inside the six-country Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), are for the Arab states to act in self-defence against Iran.
During a video meeting of GCC foreign ministers on Sunday, they said that the "option to respond to Iranian attacks" to protect regional security and stability remained on the table.
'Israel is intent on destroying the bilateral relations that Iran has built up with Gulf Arab countries with these attacks'
- Seyed Emamian, Tehran Polytechnic University
On Wednesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian sought to address Gulf concerns and said Tehran respected the sovereignty of neighbouring countries but was simply defending itself.
"Your Majesties, heads of friendly and neighboring states, we have strived alongside you and through diplomacy to avoid war, but the American-Zionist military aggression has left us no choice but to defend ourselves. We respect your sovereignty, and we believe that the security and stability of the region must be achieved through the collective efforts of its states," he said.
Seyed Emamian, an assistant professor at Tehran Polytechnic University, said that given the long and painstaking process Iran and the Gulf states had taken to improve their diplomatic relations, there was every possibility that Israel was responsible for several of the attacks and sought to maximise the unrest.
"Israel is intent on destroying the bilateral relations that Iran has built up with Gulf Arab countries with these attacks," he told MEE.
"The Iranians have always said they are attacking US and Israeli bases of interest, but the attacks on civilian and non-US facilities is either by the Israelis or maybe because of, in some rare cases, technical mistakes," he added.
Direct confrontation serves Israeli interests
Several senior Gulf government figures have repeatedly called for restraint since the war erupted, with the officials in the kingdom telling their allies to avoid taking any steps that could trigger a response by Tehran or its proxies and push the region towards a broader conflict.
There have also been a growing number of voices within Saudi Arabia urging the kingdom and the GCC not to get duped into joining the war.
"The repeated targeting of sites in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries with drones raises many suspicions that go beyond Iran," Abdulaziz Altuwaijri, a veteran Saudi politician and secretary general of the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, said on Tuesday.
"I firmly believe that the Zionist entity [Israel] wants to drag these countries into the war for more destruction, to strike the economy, and to undermine security and stability in the region."
Qatar's former prime minister, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, has also repeatedly urged the GCC not to be dragged into a direct confrontation with Iran.
"There are forces that want the council's states to become directly embroiled with Iran, and they know that the current clash between the United States and Israel on one side, and Iran on the other, will come to an end," he said earlier this week.
"But a direct clash between the council's states and Iran, if it occurs, will deplete the resources of both sides and provide an opportunity for many forces to control us under the pretext of helping us escape the crisis and halt the depletion," he said.
"The council's states have no choice but to act as a single, unified hand in confronting any aggression against them, rejecting any attempt to impose dictates or blackmail them," he added.
Sina Toosi, a senior research analyst at the National Iranian American Council, said that Israel had long sought to align Gulf states more directly against Iran and had consistently framed Iran as the central regional threat.
"From that perspective, any escalation that pulls Gulf actors into direct confrontation with Iran would serve Israeli strategic interests by regionalising the conflict and further isolating Tehran," he told MEE.
"Iran's own approach toward Gulf states in recent years has generally been more calibrated. Tehran has incentives to pressure US interests and demonstrate regional reach, but it has also invested heavily in repairing relations with Gulf neighbours, particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE," he said.
"An uncontrolled war with Gulf states would risk undermining those diplomatic gains and expanding the conflict in ways that could be highly damaging for Iran," he added.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iran-officials-say-israel-carried-out-some-drone-strikes-gulf-energy-sites
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