Israel, Iran launch more attacks as crisis deepens

Tel Aviv/Dubai/Washington: Israel and Iran launched fresh attacks on each other on Friday, a day after Tehran struck an Israeli oil refinery and after US President Donald Trump warned Israel against further attacks on an Iranian offshore gas field shared with Qatar.

Israel struck Tehran, targeting the “infrastructure of the Iranian terror regime”, the military said in a brief statement that did not provide details. Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel, the Israeli military said, triggering air raid sirens in Tel Aviv as explosions from air defence interceptors echoed across the city.

The war on Iran has killed thousands, mostly in Iran and Lebanon, spilled across the Middle East, and hit the global economy since the United States and Israel launched their joint attack on February 28.

The United Arab Emirates also reported a “missile threat” early on Friday, as Muslims began celebrating the Eid al-Fitr holiday, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Kuwait said an oil refinery in the Gulf state was hit by a drone attack.

Energy crisis escalates

The latest attacks follow days of Iranian strikes on regional energy infrastructure that has 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.

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.

Oil prices fell on Friday as Western nations and Japan offered to help secure safe passage for ships through the strait – normally the conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil supplies – and the US outlined moves to boost oil output.

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.

He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not repeat the attack on energy infrastructure. “I told him, ‘Don’t do that’, and he won’t do that,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Thursday.

Netanyahu later said Israel had acted alone in bombing Iran’s South Pars gas field.

Iran was being “decimated” and no longer had the capacity to enrich uranium or make ballistic missiles, but a revolution in the country would require a “ground component”, he said, without elaborating.

Some analysts say the war has strengthened Netanyahu’s hand, redrawing Israel’s political map in his favour, while doing the opposite for Trump: trapping him in a conflict with no clear exit, exposing his Gulf Arab allies to spiralling risks and undercutting the economic storyline that powered his return to office.

On Thursday, an Iranian missile strike hit an oil refinery in the Israeli port city of Haifa, causing a brief power outage in parts of the country but no significant damage, Israel’s energy ministry said.

The war’s initial strikes, which killed Iran’s supreme leader and other top officials, came even as Washington and Tehran were in talks over Iran’s nuclear program.

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, while French President Emmanuel Macron said defending international law and promoting de-escalation “is the best we can do”.

“I have not heard anyone here [other EU leaders] express a willingness to enter this conflict – quite the opposite,” Macron said following a European summit in Brussels.

The resistance by major US allies to becoming involved in the war reflects scepticism over a conflict European leaders have said they did not seek, which has unclear objectives and over which they have little control.

‘A new stage in the war’

Israel’s bombing of Iran’s South Pars gas field, which Trump said the US had not known about, suggested gaps in co-ordination 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.

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told the House Intelligence Committee that Washington’s and Israel’s goals differed: “The Israeli government has been focused on disabling the Iranian leadership. The president said that his objectives are to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile-launching capability, their ballistic missile production capability and their navy.”

Iran’s military said strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure had led to “a new stage in the war”, in which it had attacked energy facilities linked to the US.

“If strikes [on Iran’s energy facilities] happen again, further attacks on your energy infrastructure and that of your allies will not stop until it is completely destroyed,” Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaqari said, according to state media.

A spokesperson for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said missile production continued even during wartime, adding that Iran’s missile industry was performing at a high level this year with no concerns over production or stockpiles.

QatarEnergy’s CEO told Reuters the Iranian attacks had knocked out a sixth of Qatar’s LNG export capacity, worth $US20 billion ($28 billion) a year, causing it to declare force majeure on exports and
undertake repairs that would take three to five years.

Reuters

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