Tehran (AFP) – Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned Tuesday they would retaliate against leading US tech firms such as Google, Meta, and Apple if more Iranian leaders were killed in “targeted assassinations” in the more than month-old war. The Guards issued the threat as Iranian media reported a wave of US-Israeli strikes had hit military bases, a religious site, and a cancer drug plant in the war rocking the region and roiling the world economy. They charged that 18 American tech firms were complicit in the killings of Iranian officials and warned that they “should expect the destruction of their relevant units in exchange for every assassination in Iran.”
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the war on February 28, killing Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and setting off a wave of retaliatory attacks across the region. Trump has since zigzagged on whether Washington plans to further escalate the war — possibly by deploying American ground forces — or try to end it through negotiations with Tehran. Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, speaking 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 next steps, Hegseth 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 didn’t agree to a deal, US forces would “obliterate” all of its oil wells, its main Kharg Island export terminal, power systems, and possibly its water desalination plants.
Late Tuesday, a series of blasts again shook Tehran, with air defenses activated, AFP journalists reported. Earlier, two massive explosions rattled Iran’s central city of Isfahan, 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 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.”
Iran has denied Trump’s claims of direct talks and has kept firing at Israel and US allies in the Gulf, joined in the regional war by its Lebanese ally Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Explosions were heard Tuesday in Dubai, and two people were wounded near the Saudi capital Riyadh when air defenses intercepted a drone. Kuwait’s state oil company said one of its oil tankers was temporarily on fire off Dubai after a “direct and malicious Iranian attack.” Iran has also maintained its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of global oil normally passes, sending shock waves through the global economy. The average gasoline price at US pumps soared past $4 a gallon, the highest in nearly four years, while Indonesia announced fuel rationing.
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!”
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 local media a strike had left one such plant, on Qeshm Island, “completely out of service,” though without saying when. If Iran were to retaliate in kind, this would pose a major risk in the water-stressed region. Desalinated water provides 70 percent of drinking water in Saudi Arabia.
Israel, meanwhile, kept pounding Lebanon in its war against Hezbollah, as it mourned four Israeli soldiers killed in combat in southern Lebanon. Defence Minister Israel Katz said the 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.” Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney denounced Israel’s deployment of troops against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon as an “illegal invasion.” Ten European countries urged all sides to ensure the safety of UN peacekeepers in Lebanon after three were killed in recent days. A UN security source told AFP that Israeli tank fire had killed one of the peacekeepers. Israeli attacks 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
