As U.S. warships choke Iran's oil lifeline in the Strait of Hormuz, a stark warning emerges: Israel's offshore energy crown jewels may be the regime's next "soft target."
America's military strikes on Iranian oil tankers near Kharg Island and the port of Jask may look like a decisive victory in Washington — but they could be quietly painting a target on Israel's Mediterranean gas fields. That is the urgent warning from Amine Ayoub, a Morocco-based policy analyst and fellow at the Middle East Forum, writing in an analysis published by Ynetnews.
A Victory in the Gulf, a Threat in the Mediterranean
According to Ayoub, writing in Ynetnews, the U.S. operations have created what he calls a "strategic risk transfer" for Israel. Cornered and outgunned, Tehran has every incentive to avoid a direct, symmetric clash with the American Navy — and instead redirect its retaliation toward high-value, Western-aligned assets where U.S. protection is thinnest. That vulnerability, Ayoub argues in his Ynetnews piece, sits squarely off Israel's coast: the Leviathan, Tamar and Karish gas platforms.
The stakes are enormous. As the Middle East Forum fellow notes in his analysis, the three fields supply roughly 70 percent of Israel's electricity and underpin crucial export deals with Jordan and Egypt.
Israel's past practice of preemptively halting production during tensions is itself a danger, Ayoub writes for Ynetnews. Each shutdown costs billions of shekels and proves to Tehran that it can economically strangle Israel without ever breaching its air defenses — what he terms an "economic blockade at minimal operational cost."
A New Front Under the Waves
The threat is also going underwater. Citing Iran's seizure of a U.S. autonomous underwater vehicle near Hormuz, Ayoub warns in his Ynetnews analysis that Tehran is aggressively pursuing subsea sabotage capabilities that could cripple deep-water pipelines and communication cables for months.
Ayoub's prescription, laid out in Ynetnews, is blunt: Israel must declare that any attack on its gas fields — by Iran or its proxies — will trigger guaranteed retaliation against Iran's own energy infrastructure. He also urges transforming the $3.5 billion "Achilles' Shield" defense pact with Greece into a permanent maritime shield stretching from Haifa to Crete.
"The distant smoke off Kharg Island is not a signal to relax," Ayoub concludes in Ynetnews — it is "an urgent directive to fortify" Israel's coastlines and energy independence without hesitation.