Tehran (AFP) – Iranian media reported Tuesday that a wave of US-Israeli strikes hit military bases, a religious site, and a cancer drug plant in the more than month-old war rocking the Middle East and roiling the world economy. US President Donald Trump has sent conflicting signals on whether Washington will further escalate the war, possibly by deploying American ground forces, or try to soon end it through negotiations with Tehran. Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, speaking in Washington after he visited US troops in the Middle East, vowed that “the upcoming days will be decisive. Iran knows that, and there’s almost nothing they can militarily do about it.”
Asked about possible next steps, he said, “you can’t fight and win a war if you tell your adversary what you are willing to do, or what you are not willing to do, to include boots on the ground.” Trump threatened Monday that if Iran doesn’t agree to a deal, US forces would “obliterate” all of Tehran’s oil wells, its main Kharg Island export terminal, power systems, and possibly its water desalination plants. On Tuesday, two massive explosions shook Iran’s central city of Isfahan, seen in video footage verified by AFP, and Iranian state media reported damage to the Shia religious center of Grand Husseiniya in Zanjan in the northwest. The Iranian government also said airstrikes had hit a plant making cancer drugs and anesthetics, claims AFP could not independently verify.
Tehran residents spoke of life in a city during wartime still clinging to some routine, despite tight security and explosions that on Tuesday sparked power outages in parts of the capital. “When I make it to a cafe table, even for a few minutes, I can almost believe the world hasn’t ended,” dental assistant Fatemeh, 27, told AFP journalists in Paris via a messaging app. “And then I go back home, back to the reality of living through war, with all its darkness and weight.”
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the war on February 28, killing Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, just after a new round of talks between US and Iranian envoys. Iran has denied Trump’s claims of renewed direct talks and has kept firing at Israel and US allies in the Gulf region, joined in the regional war by Lebanon’s armed group Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis.
Explosions were heard Tuesday in Dubai and near northern Iraq’s Erbil airport, and two people were wounded near the Saudi capital Riyadh when air defense intercepted a drone, civil defense said. Kuwait’s state oil company said one of its oil tankers was on fire off Dubai after a “direct and malicious Iranian attack,” with the crew unhurt and the blaze later extinguished. Iran has also maintained its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of global oil passes, sending shock waves through the global economy. The average gasoline price at US pumps soared past $4 a gallon, the highest for nearly four years, while Indonesia announced fuel rationing and ordered civil servants to work from home one day a week to conserve energy stocks.
Trump in a Truth Social post lashed out at countries that have refused to help the United States secure the crucial waterway. “The U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us,” he wrote. “Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!” Iran has let some Chinese container ships pass, and its parliamentary committee has voted to impose tolls on other vessels while completely banning US and Israeli ships. China and Pakistan called for peace talks as soon as possible, as they agreed to boost their cooperation on Iran. The two countries outlined a joint initiative “for restoring peace and stability in the Gulf and Middle East region,” after a visit from senior Pakistani officials to Beijing.
Trump’s threats against Iran have included “completely obliterating” not just energy sites but also “possibly all desalination plants!” An Iranian health ministry official told the ISNA news agency Tuesday that a strike had left one desalination plant, on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz, “completely out of service,” though without saying when. Iran has vowed to match strikes on its infrastructure with similar raids against its US-allied Gulf neighbors. If more desalination plants were to be hit, this would pose a major risk in the water-stressed region, and experts have warned strikes on civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime. Desalinated water provides 70 percent of drinking water in Saudi Arabia and 90 percent in Kuwait.
Meanwhile, Israel pounded Lebanon, including the southern suburbs of Beirut, as it seeks to deliver a heavy blow to Iran-backed Hezbollah, which has joined the war. Israel on Tuesday reported its own casualties, with four soldiers killed in combat in southern Lebanon and eight people suffering minor injuries from falling munitions fragments near Tel Aviv. Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel’s military would occupy a swathe of southern Lebanon even after the end of the war and that “all the houses in the villages adjacent to the border in Lebanon will be demolished.” Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, and over a million have been displaced, Lebanese authorities say.
Sheltering in Beirut’s largest stadium were some 1,000 people forced from their homes, among them around 50 people with mobility challenges. “If there’s a strike, the people around me could run away and leave me behind,” said 62-year-old Fatima Nazli, who uses a wheelchair. “I can’t get up and move if no one helps me.”
© 2024 AFP
