Human Rights Watch says March strikes on South Pars and Ras Laffan gas sites likely unlawful, may be war crimes

Human Rights Watch said Wednesday that Israeli and Iranian strikes on major gas facilities in Iran and Qatar in March were likely unlawful under the laws of war and may amount to war crimes, warning that attacks on energy sites can harm civilians far beyond the battlefield because they are central to electricity supply, heating and global fuel trade.

The rights group said Israeli forces struck Iran’s South Pars gas field on March 18, 2026. Hours later on March 18, and again on March 19, Iranian forces struck Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, including liquefied natural gas, or LNG, infrastructure.

The two sites are critical to both local populations and international energy markets. Human Rights Watch, citing the International Energy Agency, said 80% of Iran’s natural gas comes from South Pars, while natural gas accounts for 79% of Iran’s electricity. Before the attacks, Ras Laffan supplied about one-fifth of the world’s LNG, according to HRW. Disruptions to gas supplies can also affect fertilizer production because natural gas is a key input for nitrogen-based fertilizers.

“Unlawful attacks on key oil and energy infrastructure have foreseeable knock-on economic impacts that could prove harmful to millions of people,” Joey Shea of Human Rights Watch said in the group’s April 22 statement.

HRW said it based its findings on satellite imagery, geolocated social-media videos, and official government and company statements. The organization said satellite imagery showed extensive damage in at least four sections of the South Pars complex in Iran and damage in two sections of Ras Laffan in Qatar.

The group said neither Israel nor Iran had demonstrated that the facilities they targeted were military objectives, a key requirement under international humanitarian law. HRW said it was unable to determine the extent to which either site was used for military purposes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly acknowledged the strike on the Iranian facility on March 19, saying: “Israel acted alone against the Asaluyeh gas compound.” Asaluyeh is the South Pars processing area.

In a March 30 response to HRW, Israel said its “targeting processes are governed by a structured and binding framework designed to ensure the accurate identification of lawful military targets.” Separately, an Israeli embassy spokesperson in London said on March 19 that South Pars was “dual use” and helped the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps build ballistic-missile capacity. HRW said Iran did not respond to its March 26 request for clarification about the strikes on Qatar.

The attacks had immediate effects. Ahmed Moussa, a spokesperson for Iraq’s Electricity Ministry, said Iranian gas flows to Iraq had “stopped completely” after the South Pars strike, underscoring how damage in Iran can quickly affect power supplies in neighboring countries.

In Qatar, state-owned QatarEnergy said damage to LNG trains at Ras Laffan had taken 12.8 million tons per year of capacity offline, equal to about 17% of Qatar’s LNG exports, and that repairs could take up to five years. Shell, which jointly owns the Pearl GTL plant with QatarEnergy, said an initial assessment indicated about one year for full repair of the damaged train there.

HRW said the strikes are part of a broader series of attacks on energy infrastructure since the latest Middle East conflict began in February 2026. Its legal argument is that energy infrastructure is presumptively civilian under the laws of war unless it is being used for military purposes. Even if a site has some military use, an attack can still be unlawful if the expected civilian harm is excessive compared with the anticipated military advantage.

That standard matters in this case because the facilities at issue are not just industrial assets. South Pars is a domestic lifeline for electricity, heating, cooking and industry inside Iran, while Ras Laffan is Qatar’s main LNG hub and a pillar of fuel supply for countries across Asia and Europe. Human Rights Watch’s conclusion was that strikes on such sites demand especially strong evidence of a concrete military objective and careful assessment of civilian costs — evidence, it said, that neither side has publicly provided.