US President Donald Trump issued a stark warning on Wednesday that any further Iranian attack on Qatar's LNG infrastructure would prompt the United States to destroy Iran's South Pars gas field — the country's single most important energy asset — as the West Asia conflict spread deeper into the Gulf's critical energy network.

Trump's statement came after Israel struck Iran's South Pars gas field, triggering a wave of Iranian retaliatory missile strikes on energy installations across Gulf nations, including Qatar's LNG plant, which sustained fire damage in the attacks. While Trump indicated that Israel had agreed to halt further strikes on South Pars for now, he made clear the restraint was conditional. "If the situation worsened," he said, the US would not hesitate to act with full force — an unambiguous warning directed at Tehran.

The escalation has rattled Gulf governments. Qatar, one of the world's largest LNG exporters, took the extraordinary step of ordering Iranian officials to leave the country within 24 hours following the missile strikes on its gas infrastructure. Abu Dhabi has shut down its gas plants, citing the deteriorating security situation as too dangerous to sustain normal operations.

Analysts warn that continued strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure could severely disrupt global LNG supplies, with Qatar's outsized role in world gas markets making it a uniquely sensitive flashpoint. Any prolonged shutdown of Qatari LNG exports, combined with the ongoing disruption to Iranian and UAE energy output, risks pushing oil and gas prices sharply higher in international markets — compounding an energy crisis already straining economies worldwide.