Trump’s War in Iran Is a Gift to America’s Natural Gas Exporters

In 1996 the small Persian Gulf nation of Qatar loaded onto a colossal tanker its inaugural shipment of liquefied natural gas, bound for a power plant in Japan. The next year, the country’s first cargo for Europe set sail. In the three decades since, Qatar’s state-owned energy company has gone on to supply LNG to buyers in more than two dozen countries, from Belgium to Bangladesh, never halting its exports of the superchilled—and superimportant—fuel. Until now.

In addition to the more obvious consequences of US President Donald Trump’s war in Iran—loss of life, geopolitical uncertainty, wild oil-price swings—the ...