Israel says it struck Iran’s largest petrochemical site

The Israeli Air Force struck Iran’s “largest petrochemical facility” a short while ago, Defense Minister Israel Katz says.

Iranian media reported that airstrikes targeted petrochemical facilities at Iran’s South Pars gas field.

Katz, in a statement, confirms the strike, saying that the IDF “has just powerfully struck the largest petrochemical facility in Iran, located in Asaluyeh, a central target responsible for about 50 percent of the country’s petrochemical production, following last week’s strike on the second main facility.”

He says that the two facilities, “which together are responsible for about 85% of Iran’s petrochemical exports, have been taken out of use and are not functioning.”

“This is a severe economic blow amounting to tens of billions of dollars to the Iranian regime,” he says.

Katz says that the petrochemical industry is a “central engine in financing the activities” of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s military build-up.

He also says that the IDF has been instructed to “continue striking with full force the national infrastructure of the Iranian terror regime.”

“The Iranian terror regime will discover that continued aggression against Israel and the cowardly and criminal firing at Israeli civilians will lead to a deepening of the economic and strategic damage it pays and to the collapse of its capabilities,” Katz adds.