Who Is Hitting Syria’s Gas Lines As The Energy Corridors Take Shape?

Authored by Aghiad Hegazi via The Cradle

Over recent weeks, gas lines in eastern Syria and near Damascus have been hit by explosions, interrupting supplies to power stations and cutting electricity across large areas. Two attacks on sections identified as the Jbessa gas line were officially described as sabotage. 

A separate blast at the Tishreen plant remains under investigation. Their timing has drawn attention as Syria negotiates a role in the routes carrying Iraqi oil and regional gas to the Mediterranean and beyond. Even a limited strike on a pipeline can delay repairs, reduce power generation, and unsettle investors weighing projects that will cost billions. 

The question is who stands to gain from keeping Syria’s energy network vulnerable, and how much the available evidence can tell us about the perpetrators.

The Jbessa line & the Tishreen blast

The first confirmed incident came on August 18, when an explosion stopped pumping through the gas export line from the Jbessa gas plant in the countryside of Hasakah, northeastern Syria. The Syrian Petroleum Company said its preliminary investigation found deliberate sabotage. 

The line serves a region containing much of Syria’s oil and gas infrastructure, and the interruption affected gas deliveries to electricity turbines. Crews isolated the wells, closed the safety valves, and began repairs. No injuries were reported. That first attack showed how a strike on a single valve could reach far beyond the site itself, with electricity users elsewhere bearing the consequences.

On September 28, the Jbessa gas line was attacked near Al-Shula in the Deir Ezzor countryside. An explosion at a sectional valve set off a fire and again halted the flow of gas from Jbessa toward power stations. Energy Minister Mohammad al-Bashir later said explosives had been used. This time, the repair crews had to replace an 18-meter section of 16-inch pipe. The company announced on October 2 that pumping had resumed after the work was completed. 

According to its land-gas director, the line had carried about 950,000 cubic meters a day. Its repeated targeting has therefore struck a significant part of the gas supply on which Syrian power generation depends. The Jbessa line feeds the gas network through the central region, including the area around Al-Furqlus in eastern Homs. This matters at a time when Damascus is trying to repair existing infrastructure and build new cross-border links. 

The proposed Iraqi oil route to Baniyas on the coast is a separate project, and there is no evidence that the attacks on Jbessa directly targeted that future pipeline. Yet damage to operating energy facilities carries an obvious warning for governments and companies contemplating a much larger transit system across Syrian territory. They would need confidence that long stretches of pipe, pumping equipment, and the workers maintaining them could be protected.

Two other violent incidents occurred on September 30. On the Masyaf Bridge in western Homs, unidentified gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying civilian workers, killing seven and wounding four. Initial SANA reports described civilian workers, while regional reporting identified them as engineers and employees of a private electricity company. The attack occurred two days after the Shula sabotage, but no investigation has established a link between the incidents.

That evening, an explosion on a gas line supplying the Tishreen thermal plant in the Damascus countryside forced Tishreen, Deir Ali, and Al-Nasiriyah out of service, bringing wider power cuts. Firefighters contained the blaze, and the authorities began restoring gas supplies. Unlike the two Jbessa incidents, the cause was unresolved when Energy Minister Bashir spoke at the site. He said inspectors would determine whether a technical fault, an attack, or sabotage had caused the blast after the area cooled. 

Who benefits from a weakened Syria?

The Syrian government has not named a party responsible for the pipeline sabotage. Journalist and political writer Bassel al-Mohammed, speaking to The Cradle, argues that the repeated attacks on major gas facilities are difficult to treat as isolated incidents. 

Their effect, he says, extends beyond the physical damage to a valve or section of pipe. Each interruption adds to the impression that Syria is an unsafe place for investment in energy infrastructure, just as Damascus is seeking partners to restore the sector and connect it to neighboring states.

For Mohammed, Israel is among the most prominent potential beneficiaries of Syria’s economic and security weakness. A Syrian state struggling to rebuild its infrastructure would have less room to resist pressure in any future political or security settlement, he says. 

He also points to Syria’s prospective role in the Arab Gas Pipeline, which connects the Jordanian border with the Turkish border through Syrian territory, amid the search for routes less exposed to disruption at the Strait of Hormuz.

The distribution of the incidents, including the damage around Tishreen, raises questions for him about whether a group with knowledge of critical facilities is operating across more than one area. 

Israeli news is claiming that Iran struck the gas pipeline near Damascus, Syria. Many Syrians are pointing the finger at ISIS and even Israel itself, but we don’t know. Some Syrians are skeptical of the Israel claim because it is at war with Iran; the claim could be self-serving. Syrian officials stated that the exact cause of the blast remains unknown and could be a technical malfunction, an attack, or an act of sabotage. The explosion ruptured a gas line in the Haran Al-Awamid area, forcing three major power plants (Tishreen, Deir Ali, and Nasiriyah) offline and worsening electricity shortages. Earlier in the week, another pipeline explosion in eastern Syria was blamed by authorities on sabotage, though no group has been identified or accused directly for either event. What is clear, is that Syria will continue to struggle economically. Foreign investors will be spooked. And poverty will bite harder.

— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) October 2, 2026

On September 29, between the Shula and Tishreen incidents, the Syrian Petroleum Company inaugurated a further section of the Arab Gas Pipeline project at Al-Furqlus. Officials said the completed segment adds 186 kilometers to roughly 380 kilometers of existing line, bringing the connected network to about 566 kilometers, with a stated capacity of up to 11 million cubic meters of gas per day. 

The two-way design gives Damascus room to bargain over future gas flows. For now, a route to Europe remains a prospect – the supply and transit agreements needed to make it work have yet to follow.

If such links eventually carry more gas northward, they could compete with some plans to expand Israeli gas sales from Eastern Mediterranean fields, including Leviathan and Tamar. The degree of competition would depend on supply contracts, prices, and the capacity actually brought into service. It cannot be assumed from the existence of a pipeline alone. 

Still, Mohammed sees a strategic interest for Israel in limiting Syria’s ability to emerge as a reliable corridor, especially while Damascus remains exposed to Israeli military pressure in the south.

Energy routes & Israeli calculations

The rivalry over Syria also sits within a wider contest for the routes moving oil and gas from Iraq and the Gulf. Turkish plans for exports through Ceyhan and Syrian hopes of reopening a Mediterranean outlet would offer producers alternatives to the Strait of Hormuz. 

Several of these lines are proposals or rehabilitation schemes rather than working substitutes for established Gulf terminals. Their prospects depend on financing, security, technical surveys, and agreements among the governments involved. Treating all the routes as if they already exist would exaggerate both Syria’s current leverage and the immediate threat they pose to rival transit hubs.

In February, The Cradle traced the possible Israeli origin of some gas supplied to Syria through Jordan, while noting the opacity of the contracts and the difficulty of establishing the precise source of every shipment. The Begin-Sadat Center later discussed Israeli gas reaching Syria indirectly through regional arrangements.  A more diverse supply network could weaken that dependence, but the claim that new transit lines would cause Damascus and Amman to dispense with Israeli gas altogether goes beyond what the available contracts establish.

Syria and Iraq signed memoranda in July on rehabilitating the long-dormant Kirkuk–Baniyas oil line. Syrian Petroleum Company chief Youssef Qiblawi has discussed the possibility of work beginning in the first quarter of 2027. 

The route would give Iraqi crude an outlet on the Mediterranean, yet it still faces major engineering, financing, and security hurdles. The agreements mark a political commitment to examine the corridor, not the completion of a new pipeline. Syria’s coastal port facilities would also require the capacity and protection to handle sustained exports if the project moves ahead.

Security researcher Aziz Moussa reads the sabotage as a possible regional message. Speaking to The Cradle, he places Israel among the suspects because of its continuing pressure on Damascus and its incursions into Quneitra. 

In his assessment, repeated blows to energy facilities could deepen Syria’s security fragility, erode confidence in reconstruction, and complicate plans for an energy corridor. He also suggests that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have political reasons to raise the pressure. None of those considerations, Moussa acknowledges, demonstrates that Israeli aircraft or drones carried out the attacks; Syrian officials have not presented evidence of such a strike on the Jbessa line.

Moussa notes a difficulty with that theory. Israel has generally used overt or attributable airstrikes against Syrian military targets. A covert attack on civilian gas infrastructure while security arrangements are under discussion would represent a different pattern. 

He therefore leaves open another possibility: ISIS cells, which have attacked infrastructure in Syria and Iraq before. Establishing responsibility would require physical evidence from the sites and a credible investigation into how the attackers reached them.

Israeli energy analysts have nevertheless taken notice of the Iraqi route. In a paper for the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS), researcher Vita Avrahamov argues that restoring the Kirkuk–Baniyas corridor could reduce Israel’s prospects of becoming a major transit hub for West Asian energy bound for Europe. 

Proposals to use the Eilat–Ashkelon pipeline and link it with Gulf networks would face a competing route across Syria. In an N12 article, she also says that each investment strengthening Syria as an energy transit state gives Gulf states and Europe more alternatives, reducing the incentive to develop a competing route through Israel. 

Her assessment sees advantages for Israel in oil exporters gaining alternatives to Hormuz and reducing Iranian leverage. The economic implications are thus mixed, even from an Israeli strategic perspective.

Avrahamov’s warning shows what an Iraqi route through Syria could cost Israel. Damascus, meanwhile, is seeking to carry the region’s energy across a network that attackers have already disrupted twice. Its ambitions will depend as much on keeping those lines operating as on the agreements signed to extend them.