The Desert Pipeline That Ensures Israel Can Keep Importing Oil

Israel relies almost entirely on imported oil and the war with Hamas has disrupted the country’s main terminal on the Mediterranean. But there’s a long-standing Plan B: a 158-mile (254-kilometer) pipeline linking the sliver of Israeli coast on the Red Sea with the country’s oil refineries.

The current Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline was built in the late 1960s as a joint venture with pre-revolutionary Iran, which had a markedly different relationship with Tel Aviv to today’s Islamic Republic. For Israel, the route across the Negev desert offered a way to import oil from Iran without using Suez canal. For Iran the route also allowed its oil to bypass the canal, reloading at Israel’s Mediterranean ports and shipping it on to customers in Europe.