Israel Sabotages Diplomacy

On 6 April, while Egyptian, Pakistani, and Turkish mediators were actively circulating a 45-day ceasefire proposal and regional officials were still telling the Associated Press “we are still talking to both sides,” Israel struck the South Pars petrochemical complex at Asaluyeh — the world’s largest natural gas field, shared with Qatar, and the backbone of Iran’s domestic power grid.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced it himself. Combined with last week’s strike on Iran’s second-largest petrochemical site in Khuzestan, approximately 85% of Iran’s total petrochemical exports are now offline. Katz called it “a severe economic blow” costing Iran “tens of billions of dollars.” Euronews and the Associated Press both noted explicitly that the strike appeared separate from Trump’s own ultimatum on Hormuz — meaning Israel acted unilaterally, on its own timetable, while American diplomats were still working the phones.

Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and one of the foremost analysts of US-Iran relations, asked the precise question that needs to be on the table: is this Israel sabotaging diplomacy, or is it Washington demonstrating that Trump’s deadlines are theatrical? His answer, offered on Democracy Now, is that it is likely both simultaneously — Israel wants the war to continue, and Trump is using ultimatums to project strength while privately searching for an exit.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei stated plainly on 6 April that the United States had “destroyed the path to diplomacy.” The European Council President António Costa called on the same day for diplomacy to be given a chance, saying any targeting of civilian energy infrastructure is “illegal and unacceptable.”

This is the pattern that has repeated across six weeks of this war. Every time diplomatic momentum builds — a ceasefire framework, a mediator’s visit, a back-channel signal — a strike follows that resets the terms and hardens Iranian positions. The previous South Pars attack in March triggered Iranian strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure that set Qatar’s gas facilities back three to five years, according to Parsi.

A party that wants this war to end does not strike the other side’s largest industrial complex while mediators are in the room. The sequencing is not coincidental. It is a strategy.