Name: Trump criticizes Israel over Iran gas site attack
Uploaded: 2026-03-19T16:42:25.000Z
Duration: 9 min 5 s
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And a rare rebuke of Israel from the US President Donald Trump says he knew nothing about Israeli attacks on Iran's South Pas gas field, the largest in the world.

The president posted on social media, no more attack will be made by Israel on the area unless Tehran retaliates against Qatar, which of course shares the gas field with Iran.

Oil and gas facilities came under attack from Iran on Wednesday, including sites in Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait.

Saudi Arabia says it intercepted four missiles over Riyadh as foreign ministers from the region met in the capital.

CNN's Oren Liebman joining us now from Jerusalem.

And Oren, I want to learn more, if we can, about what happened with the Israeli attack on the Iranian part of the South Pause gas field.

We've certainly heard from the US President.

Anything from the Israeli side, Becky, before we saw President Donald Trump's response, we had heard from two Israeli officials that the attack was coordinated with the United States.

Since the very first opening strikes nearly three weeks ago now, Israel and the US have been coordinated, coordinated on nearly every aspect of this.

And that's not only a test to the relationship between the US And Israel at the political and military levels.

It's also simply necessary to carry out these attacks with so many moving parts in the air and in the sea all at once.

So Israeli officials say the attack on the South Pars gas field was coordinated with the US and it was intentionally targeted at gas and electricity infrastructure, not at oil infrastructure, to insulate the attacks and the price of fuel in the United States from Israel's ongoing attacks.

Of course, that didn't work when Iran lashed out and attacked gas and oil infrastructure around the region.

But everything we have heard from the Israelis, and

we heard it again from a foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last night on Jake Tapper's show, is that all of this has been coordinated with the US and we've heard that from the US Side as well, both political and military.

So, Becky, at this point, I think it's very difficult to believe Trump's claim that the US and he knew nothing about the attack on on the South Pars gas field because of the coordination we have seen to this very point.

The idea that three weeks into a war that Israel wants to continue, that Israel would just simply go rogue and carry out attacks that are not coordinated with the US Is incredibly hard to believe right now.

What else do we know about the long list of targets that we understand Israel has at this point, they were, it seems, targeted at individuals and groups inside of Iran.

I'm just wondering whether this long list includes other installations outside of Tehran and the sort of, you know, the neighborhoods.

That answer is almost certainly they're not going to give us a target list of what's remaining just yet.

But we have seen them expand where they are striking.

Yesterday they acknowledged striking on Iran's northern border.

Their first strikes, they say, in northern Iran.

Israeli officials tell us they hit Iranian naval assets in the Caspian Sea, which is again the first time we've seen that since the war.

There are also almost certainly more targeted killings that that Israel is planning to carry out, including against much of a Khamenei and others.

So, so that list has certainly has more targets on it, Becky, as the war continues.

So what do you make of this apparent split between the US And Israel, with President Trump in a ra rebuke of Israel saying the US Knew nothing about the strike on a key Iranian gas field after Iranian state media blamed both the US And Israel and President Trump calling on Israel to end all strikes on energy targets?

My thinking about that is that President Trump has made a political analysis and that is that the greatest vulnerability we in the United States and especially the world, as your previous commentators have made mention, is vulnerability in the energy sector.

So that particular political pressure, both domestic and foreign, is felt by President Trump and what he saw was an attack, perhaps we don't know this for certain, but

Whether or not Israel had any previous approval of, or at least giving alerts to the United States, doubtful, nobody knows.

And if there is anything that President Trump does not want to happen, that is a political downslide as a result of an uproar both in the United States and around the world about the desperate circumstances that are resulting from the, quite frankly, the embargo of fossil fuels, natural gas, petroleum bottled up down there at the Straits of Hormuz.

Could this signal the US Stepping back a little bit here?

So perhaps again we have I'm not one of these who have optimism hasn't pushed me to the point in which I would embrace the expectation that this war will end in another week to two weeks.

And that's because we use an expression in the military, the enemy has a vote.

And what that means, quite simply is we can have all the best plans in the world.

We can establish our objectives limited or broader, but

we are in a conflict with a regime that has a long history grounded in religious fanaticism it is not so simple to encourage the Iranian leadership to abandon what from its perspective is an existential conflict, meaning Iran from the date of its formation in 1979 has dedicated itself to self preservation and directly and has expressed very clearly destruction of Israel and the implementation or imposition of huge pain on the United States.

I don't see the Iranians necessarily backing down, regardless of of what President Trump has done vis a vis Israel and the bombing of the South Pause oil fields.

A US military ship with almost 2,500 military personnel on board is heading to the region.

And according to Reuters, the Trump administration is considering sending thousands more.

Now, we don't know exactly what they'll be doing, but

there is talk of them getting troops to extract Iran's enriched uranium or possibly sending them to Kharg Island.

How risky would these ground operations be?

First way to answer that question is to incorporate what you have described as two objectives of US Land forces.

One is securing the uranium that is buried across Iran, locations not necessarily well known.

That is a very difficult task because you're putting American soldiers in harm's way deep inside the country and that becomes a real fight on the ground.

The second use of American soldiers, at least from my perspective, is to establish some sort of enclave around the Straits Hormuz.

That particular geographic location and the utilization of that location by the Iranians has caused what we see of the great pain now suffered around the world.

So you get ground troops and you've establish a beachhead around the Straits of Hormuz for the purpose of one, locating additional ground to ship weapons as well as Iranian forces, naval assets that constitute the threat to shipping.

So there are two, as you've recited, two potential locations for the imposition of US Forces, both extremely dangerous.

Retired Major General Mark McCauley, thank you so much for joining us.