The sabotage, which analysts said marked an escalation in the shadow war between Israel and Iran, caused sweeping disruption in several provinces.

Israel carried out covert attacks on two major natural gas pipelines inside Iran this week, disrupting the flow of heat and cooking gas to provinces with millions of people, according to two Western officials and a military strategist affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The strikes represent a notable shift in the shadow war that Israel and Iran have been waging by air, land, sea and cyberattack for years.

Israel has long targeted military and nuclear sites inside Iran — and assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists and commanders, both inside and outside of the country. Israel has also waged cyberattacks to disable servers belonging to the oil ministry, causing turmoil at gas stations nationwide.

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    1•9 months ago

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    But blowing up part of the country’s energy infrastructure, relied on by industries, factories and millions of civilians, marked an escalation in the covert war and appeared to open a new frontier, officials and analysts said.

    “The enemy’s plan was to completely disrupt the flow of gas in winter to several main cities and provinces in our country,” Iran’s oil minister, Javad Owji, told Iranian media on Friday.

    But Iran supports and arms a network of proxy militia that have been actively fighting with Israel and United States, including the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and militants in Iraq and Syria.

    “This shows that the covert networks operating in Iran have expanded their target list and advanced beyond just military and nuclear sites,” said Shahin Modarres, a Rome-based security analyst focused on the Middle East.

    But his assessment was at odds with the comments of local governors and officials from Iran’s national gas company, who had described widespread outages of service in five provinces, forcing the closure of government buildings.

    He noted that major pipelines in Iran, which carry gas across vast distances that include mountains, deserts and rural fields, are patrolled by guards in outposts along the length of the pipes.

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