Iran has threatened to destroy the Middle East’s biggest oil factories in a move that could cripple the Gulf and trigger a global energy crisis.

As well as striking oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait, Iran could target desalination plants that supply millions in the Middle East with drinking water.

Such an attack could also trigger a cost of living emergency in Britain that could push fuel prices to record highs. Sir Keir Starmer is expected to hold a meeting of the Cobra crisis committee on Monday to discuss the UK response.

The threat of tit-for-tat military responses from Iran and the US has also placed a “ticking time bomb” under the global market, analysts have warned.

Although the US and Israel have targeted Iran’s missile capabilities heavily, Tehran is still believed to have the weapons in its arsenal to cause a crisis in the Middle East and beyond.

Before the war, Iran was considered to have the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the Middle East, with anything from 2,000 to 10,000 ballistic and cruise missiles.

For strikes in the Gulf, Iran could use its short-range missiles, which typically have ranges of less than 600 miles and are designed to hit regional targets.

Potential energy sites now in Tehran’s crosshairs include the UAE’s Ruwais refinery in Abu Dhabi. The facility is the Middle East’s largest single-site refinery, producing as many as 922,000 barrels of oil a day.

Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq processing plant, the world’s largest crude oil stabilisation facility, supplies as many as seven million barrels a day.

It could also be hit, as could the Samref refinery, which turns 402,000 barrels of oil a day into products such as petrol, diesel and jet fuel.

Iran has already struck Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City complex, the country’s main liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, resulting in “significant damage”, the country’s ministry of foreign affairs said last week.

Ras Laffan processes and exports 20 per cent of the global LNG supply, and missile strikes have removed 17 per cent of its LNG capacity – equal to 3.5 per cent of the global supply.

Qatar’s Mesaieed Petrochemical Complex, which turns gas and oil into chemicals including plastic ingredient polyethylene, could also be bombarded.

Analysts at the Wall Street bank Citi have warned that oil could hit $200 a barrel if Tehran conducts “broad energy infrastructure attacks”. That would surpass the record high of $147 a barrel, reached in 2008.  Surging oil prices would hammer growth and drive up inflation.

Motorists would feel the pain first, with warnings that diesel could reach £2 a litre within weeks. That would surpass the peak seen in 2022 during the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Natural gas has already doubled in price since the crisis began, and would be driven higher still if key LNG facilities in the Gulf were destroyed.

Higher gas prices would feed through into energy bills. In Britain, the price cap provides some protection to householders, but bills are already expected to jump by more than £300 a year from this summer. That figure would surely become higher.

The Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for one-fifth of the world’s oil, has been closed for weeks, causing global energy prices to soar.

Attacks against desalination plants could cripple the Middle East, among the driest regions in the world, with water availability about 10 times lower than the global average, according to the World Bank.

There are more than 400 plants along the Gulf coast. About 42 per cent of the world’s desalination capacity is based in the Middle East, according to a study published in the journal Nature.

Desalinated water is 42 per cent of drinking water in the UAE, 70 per cent in Saudi Arabia, 86 per cent in Oman and 90 per cent in Kuwait, according to a 2022 report from the French Institute of International Relations think tank.

“Over there, without desalinated water there, there is nothing,” said Esther Crauser-Delbourg, a water economist, with any strike on such facilities having the potential to trigger a major humanitarian crisis.

Countries in the Middle East have faced non-stop missile and drone attacks from Iran. To stop these weapons, the Gulf kingdoms have been using layered air defences.

That has included combat air patrols by aircraft such as Typhoon Eurofighters and Dassault Rafale jets to shoot down drones with air-to-air missiles.

Apache helicopter gunships have also been dispatched to track low-flying drones then shoot them down with their 30mm chain guns. They are also using costly Patriot or Terminal High Altitude Area Defence batteries to shoot down incoming missiles.

Gulf kingdoms have also asked Ukraine for access to its interceptor drones.

Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, said Donald Trump, the president, was leaving “all options on the table” in the war in the Middle East, which included bombing Iran’s energy hubs.

“Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate,” he told NBC News. “This is the only language the Iranians understand.”

Meanwhile, former military chiefs warned that Britain was defenceless against a potential Iranian missile attack.

Israeli military officials said an attempted Iranian strike on the joint UK-US base on Diego Garcia had demonstrated that Tehran now had weapons capable of reaching London.