Israel Just Hit Iran's Energy System

Key points

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  Israel has for the first time gone after energy infrastructure in Iran.

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  The world's largest natural gas field, the South Pars Field, is the source of about 70% of the natural gas that Iran has.

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  All the natural gas that they have is used for power generation.

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  Israel took out a processing facility on the shore.

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  A processing center is required to remove impurities so that you can burn it safely or put into a pipeline where anyone can use it safely.

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  This took out one-fifth of the capacity of Iran to process natural gas.

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  We should see an impact on power generation in a matter of days.

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  Without that flow through, they simply can't keep the lights on.

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  Nothing that was done here affects export infrastructure at the moment.

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  Iran likes to talk about how it has more natural gas than most countries in the world, and that should give it a voice in a number of international energy fora, but it doesn't actually export any natural gas.

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  The United States has focused on things like missile stockpiles and the industrial capacity to build more missiles and drones.

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  The Iranians have tended to go after political targets.

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  Israel have pure aerial superiority across the entire country.

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  You can't move these things and you can't hide these things and you really can't harden them versus airstrikes.

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  If this is a conscious decision to change tactics and start going after the power infrastructure, Iran's going to become a very nasty place very soon.

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