Smoke billows after airstrikes on oil depots in Tehran, Iran.
Majid Saeedi/Getty Images
- New Israeli strikes hit Iran on Friday.
- Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates said they were dealing with missile attacks.
- But oil prices fell as the US indicated it would boost output.
Israel launched a fresh wave of attacks on Iran on Friday, a day after US President Donald Trump told it not to repeat its strikes on Iranian natural gas infrastructure, which sharply escalated the US-Israeli war on Iran.
The conflict has killed thousands of people, spread to neighbouring nations and hit the global economy since the United States and Israel launched strikes on 28 February, after talks about Tehran’s nuclear program failed to yield a deal.
“The IDF has just begun a wave of strikes against the infrastructure of the Iranian terror regime in the heart of Tehran,” a spokesperson for the Israeli Defence Forces said, without providing details.
Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates said they were dealing with missile attacks in the early hours of Friday, following days of Iranian strikes on regional energy infrastructure that have roiled global markets.
Energy prices jumped on Thursday after Iran responded to an Israeli attack on a major gas field by hitting Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, which processes around a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas, causing damage that will take years to repair.
READ | Iran hits Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar oil zones as war with Israel and US escalates
Saudi Arabia’s main port on the Red Sea, where it has been able to divert some exports to avoid Iran’s closure of the Gulf’s exit point, the Strait of Hormuz, was also attacked on Thursday.
But oil prices fell on Friday as leading European nations and Japan offered to help secure safe passage for ships through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil supplies, and the US outlined moves to boost oil output.
People clear rubble in a house in the Beryanak District after it was damaged by missile attacks in Tehran, Iran.
Majid Saeedi/Getty Images
The strikes on regional energy facilities underscored Iran’s continued ability to exact a heavy price for the US-Israeli campaign, and the limits of air defences in protecting the Gulf’s most valuable and strategic energy assets.
Trump, politically vulnerable to rising fuel prices among his core voters ahead of November’s midterm elections, has lashed out at allies who have responded cautiously to his demands that they help secure the Strait of Hormuz.
He said he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to repeat the attack on energy infrastructure.
“I told him: ‘Don’t do that,‘ and he won’t do that,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday.
Netanyahu later said Israel had acted alone in the bombing of Iran’s South Pars gas field and confirmed that Trump had asked Israel to hold off on such attacks.
Black smoke billows from an Israeli air strike on an alleged pro-Iranian Hezbollah target in southern Beirut, a stronghold of the party, as Israel continues its attacks on Lebanon, expanding the conflict across the region following the large-scale Israeli-US strike on Iran.
Marwan Naamani/picture alliance via Getty Images
Iran is being “decimated” and no longer has the capacity to enrich uranium or make ballistic missiles, but a revolution in the country would require a “ground component”, he said, without elaborating.
With no end in sight to the conflict, and the threat of a global “oil shock” growing by the day, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan issued a joint statement expressing “our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait”.
They also promised “other steps to stabilise energy markets, including working with certain producing nations to increase output”.
There was little indication of any immediate move.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reiterated that any contribution to securing the strait would come only after hostilities ended.
The resistance by major US allies to becoming involved in the war reflects scepticism over a conflict European leaders have said has unclear objectives that they did not seek and over which they have little control.
Smoke rises after an explosion in the industrial zone, caused by debris after interception of a drone by air defence, according to the Fujairah media office in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates.
Christopher Pike/Getty Images
Israel’s bombing of Iran’s South Pars gas field, which Trump said the US had not known about, suggested gaps in the coordination of strategy and war aims between the main protagonists.
Adding to the confusion around the attack, three Israeli officials said the operation had taken place in consultation with the United States, but was unlikely to be repeated.