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Israel was behind attacks on two major gas pipelines in Iran on February 14, a report with the New York Times has suggested. Citing Western officials and a military strategist affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, the report also said the attacks disrupted the flow of heat and cooking gas to provinces with millions of people.

Briefing the Iranian media on the attack, the country’s Oil Minister, Javad Owji, said, “The enemy’s plan was to completely disrupt the flow of gas in winter to several main cities and provinces in our country.”

The minister, however, did not publicly blame Israel, even though he, on previous occasions, had referred to the blasts as “sabotage and terrorist attacks”.

While such attacks are rare in Iran, Arab separatist terrorists in Iran claimed in 2017 that they had blown up two oil pipelines in coordinated attacks in the country’s western Khuzestan province.

In December, Iran executed five people whom it accused of being saboteurs with links to Israel’s Mossad intelligence service in a decades-long shadow war that has seen Tehran accuse Israel of attacks on its nuclear and missile efforts, charges the latter has never confirmed or denied.

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.

Iran has said that it does not want a direct war with the United States, and it has denied being involved in either the October 7 terrorist attacks against Israel or the various attacks against American and Israeli targets in the region since then.

However, the country has been supporting arms a network of proxy militia that have been actively fighting with Israel and the United States, including the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and terrorists in Iraq and Syria.

Iran has also armed and trained Hamas and other Palestinian fighters.