South Pars strike stirs debate among Iranians over impact and intent

Nematollah Shahsavani, 40, a dual British-Iranian national, and Alireza Farasati, 22, an Iranian national, were charged under the National Security Act with assisting a foreign intelligence service.

The Crown Prosecution Service said the charges relate to activities including “reconnaissance of targets” between July and August 2025.

Counter Terrorism Policing said the investigation focused on alleged surveillance of locations and individuals linked to the Jewish community in London.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans described the charges as “extremely serious” and said police would be “relentless” in pursuing those who threaten public safety.

“We fully recognise that the public - and in particular the Jewish community - will be concerned, but I hope this investigation reassures them that we will not hesitate to take action,” she said.

The two men are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday.

Explosions, air activity and security measures were reported in several parts of Iran from late Wednesday into early Thursday, according to eyewitness accounts sent to Iran International.

The southwestern city of Ahvaz, the main city in Khuzestan province, saw fighter jet activity at 5:53 a.m. followed by an explosion around 6:30 a.m. in the Golestan area.

In northern Iran, a strong blast was heard at 5:16 a.m. in Sari, the capital of Mazandaran province. The port city of Bandar Anzali was also hit by what was described as two drone attacks followed by heavy bombardment targeting naval units of the IRGC and the army. Reports said fuel storage sites were damaged and several warships were destroyed.

In central Iran, a police station in Shahin Shahr, near Isfahan, was reported hit on Wednesday evening. Separately, in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, Basij forces were reported to have set up nighttime checkpoints in an area at the city’s entrance, with armed patrols causing traffic and fear.

Wars rarely end on political will alone, and this conflict is constrained by a dense web of strategic, economic and security pressures that neither side can easily escape.

What began with stated goals—containing Iran’s nuclear program, degrading its missile and regional capabilities, and “helping” the Iranian people—has hardened into a confrontation between objectives that are arguably incompatible.

As the conflict spreads into the arteries of the global economy, ending it will require more than a shift in rhetoric—or even policy. A durable ceasefire would depend on mediators capable of sequencing reciprocal steps and bridging fundamentally incompatible aims.

More likely, the war will end not through decisive victory, but at the point where continued fighting no longer improves either side’s position and the mutual threat environment begins to recede.

Incompatible endgames

For the United States and Israel, the conflict forms part of a broader attempt to reshape the Middle East’s security architecture. Since October 7, Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly invoked a “new Middle East” in which Iran’s regional reach is sharply curtailed.

Drawing on past confrontations, including the 12-day war of June 2025, Washington and Tel Aviv appear to be seeking tangible outcomes: dismantling key military capabilities and preventing their reconstruction—an objective that may prove harder than the initial blow.

Iran’s logic is different. Tehran is pursuing what might be called coercive endurance: safeguarding regime survival while preserving deterrence by imposing high costs on its adversaries. Its demands—compensation and assurances against renewed war—serve not only strategic ends but domestic ones, helping sustain elite cohesion and legitimacy.

Regional actors, particularly Persian Gulf Arab states, and external powers with major energy interests remain cautious, oscillating between defensive positioning and watchful restraint. For now, mediation remains peripheral. The war is being shaped less in diplomatic forums than under fire.

A war of arteries

The Strait of Hormuz has evolved from a geographic chokepoint into a central strategic lever. Iran’s approach rests on the premise that disrupting this vital waterway transforms a bilateral confrontation into a global economic crisis.

Energy prices become not just an indicator but a weapon, intended to erode political will in Washington and its allies by destabilizing markets and raising costs worldwide.

Washington, in turn, has focused on Kharg Island—Iran’s primary oil export terminal and the loading point for roughly 90 percent of its crude exports. The threat to Kharg is a direct counter to Tehran’s Hormuz leverage. If Hormuz raises global costs, Kharg raises the cost of survival for Iran itself.

This duel points to a central constraint: the war will move toward closure only when both sides conclude that choking each other’s economic lifelines yields diminishing returns compared with the systemic risks to global energy markets.

Any durable settlement would therefore require a new security arrangement that guarantees safe passage through Hormuz while removing the threat to Iran’s export infrastructure.

Question of authority

The killing of senior political figures, including Ali Larijani, has raised concerns about gaps in coordination at the center of power. The question is whether an institutional structure still exists capable of accepting defeat—or even signing a ceasefire.

Yet the continuation of Iranian strikes suggests the system’s resilience does not rest on individuals alone. Tehran’s military order, shaped by a doctrine of decentralized “mosaic” defense, appears to have maintained operational coherence.

That resilience, however, raises doubts about whether a ceasefire could produce lasting stability while the machinery of war remains intact.

Inside Iran, external attacks appear to have strengthened nationalist sentiment among parts of society, yet leadership losses could also trigger fissures within the security establishment or embolden dissent. The balance between cohesion and fracture remains unclear.

For now, political and military leadership appear aligned in their belief that the situation remains manageable.

Some in Washington therefore see a more realistic objective not as immediate regime collapse but as forcing Tehran into a form of strategic accommodation—perhaps through the rise of more pragmatic figures capable of imposing restraint on military actors.

Such an outcome could allow Tehran to concede in practice while presenting the result domestically as survival or even victory.

Whether that path is viable remains uncertain. Internal purges, factional tensions and competing strategic visions continue to complicate any transition, even as some voices within Iran’s security establishment advocate widening the conflict.

Ultimately, how the war ends will depend not only on economic and regional pressures but on a deeper unknown: how much organizational capacity, military discipline and political authority remain in Tehran to accept a new strategic order.

Wars of this kind end when exhaustion converges with recognition. The decisive question is whether there remains a clear address in Tehran capable of signing—and enforcing—a ceasefire, and what form that political will ultimately takes.

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.

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.

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  Sweden summons Iran envoy amid reports citizen faces death sentence

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.