Iran pipeline network damaged in ‘terrorist acts of sabotage,’ says minister

Explosions in the early hours of this morning damaged a key pipeline network in Iran, in what the country’s Oil Minister has called “terrorist acts of sabotage”.

Speaking to state-run television today, Iran’s Oil Minister Javad Owji revealed that two explosions rocked the country’s main south-north gas pipeline network. The “terrorist acts of sabotage occurred at 1am on Wednesday morning on the network of national gas transmission pipelines in two regions of the country.”

Owji speculated that the attack could have been planned to counter the commemoration of Iran’s 1979 “Islamic revolution”. He claimed that the government “anticipated such acts of sabotage around the anniversary of the Iranian revolution [11 February] and quickly changed the configuration of the transmission network to counter the enemy’s objective to cause gas outages in major provinces.”

The only places that experienced gas outages due to the incident were villages surrounding the damaged pipeline, according to Owji. That was echoed by the dispatching director of the National Iranian Gas Company, who reportedly denied that gas cuts to industries and offices in some provinces were caused by the explosions. They were, he explained, the result of temporary restrictions that the authorities had planned ahead for maintenance purposes.

If the explosions were indeed caused by acts of sabotage by “terrorists”, it remains open to speculation about who conducted them. The usual suspects are in the frame for this: militant separatist groups, Daesh operatives or a state actor such as Israel, which has reportedly been the cause of numerous sabotage incidents on Iranian infrastructure over the years.

READ: Iran uncovers Israel spy cell planning mass sabotage operations