Tehran (AFP) – Israel announced a new wave of “broad-scale” strikes on Tehran on Saturday as the escalating war in the Middle East entered its second week and oil prices surged on fears about global supply disruption. The US-Israeli bombing campaign unleashed on February 28 has provoked Iranian retaliation against US allies across the region, with President Donald Trump saying Friday that only “unconditional” Iranian surrender would end the war.
But early on Saturday, air raid alerts and explosions were ringing out above Jerusalem as well as Gulf cities Dubai, Manama and near Riyadh, where Saudi Arabia intercepted a ballistic missile fired at an air base housing US military personnel. Israel’s military announced “a broad-scale wave of strikes” on government sites in the Iranian capital, and AFP photos showed fire and smoke billowing from Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport after it was hit.
The week of widening conflict has hit Lebanon, Cyprus in the EU, Turkey, and Azerbaijan—and reached as far as Sri Lanka, where US forces fired a deadly torpedo strike that sank an Iranian warship. In addition to killing hundreds of people and causing significant damage to homes as well as infrastructure, the war has inflicted economic chaos. Crude oil prices surged on mounting fears about global supply disruption as the war and Tehran’s pressure on the Strait of Hormuz upend the world’s energy and transport sectors.
The critical energy waterway is where tankers typically move nearly 20 percent of the world’s crude oil and about 20 percent of liquefied natural gas from the Gulf. The main US contract, West Texas Intermediate, soared more than 12 percent to over $90 per barrel, topping off the biggest weekly gain on record. The US government has so far said the war could last for weeks—potentially four or more—and Trump has said the largest US defense firms have agreed to quadruple production of advanced weaponry.
US officials have tried to swat away questions over United States stockpiles of air defense and other munitions as US Central Command said over 3,000 Iranian targets have been struck in the past week. Though Iranian retaliation has been inflicted widely across the Middle East, US rivals China and Russia have stayed largely out of the fray. But US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the United States is “not concerned” about reports that Russia is providing intelligence to Iran on US troop positions and movements. While declining to confirm the reports, Hegseth, in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes”, said: “We’re tracking everything.”
Renewed Israeli attacks on Tehran came a day after Israel intensified its air strikes on Lebanon, striking Beirut’s southern suburbs, where the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah holds sway, and Baalbeck in the east.
– ‘Unconditional surrender’ –
Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced support for an “immediate” ceasefire in Iran during a phone call with Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian on Friday, the Kremlin said. Trump, who has given varying reasons for starting the war, has spurned fresh talks with Tehran, however, and said on Truth Social “there will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER”. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said when the president determines Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States and the operation’s goals are realized, “Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender, whether they say it themselves or not.”
Trump also promised to help rebuild the country’s economy if Tehran installs someone “acceptable” to him to replace Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed last weekend. Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, said the United States would have no role in selecting Khamenei’s successor. “The selection of Iran’s leadership will take place strictly in accordance with our constitutional procedures and solely by the will of the Iranian people, without any foreign interference,” he added.
– ‘Humanitarian disaster’ –
The war has killed six US service members and Trump is to attend the return of their bodies at a transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Saturday. Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 217 people have been killed in Israeli air strikes, and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam warned that a “humanitarian disaster is looming”. In addition to the toll, 300,000 people in the country had been forced to flee their homes, the Norwegian Refugee Council said. Three UN peacekeepers were wounded when their base in southern Lebanon was hit on Friday, the UN force and the Ghanaian military said. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun accused Israel of targeting them, and French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the attack as “unacceptable”.
Tehran was pummelled by Israeli strikes on Friday, which AFP journalists described as among the heaviest days of bombardments yet. According to Iran’s health ministry, the US and Israeli strikes have killed 926 people, a number AFP could not independently verify. Iran has launched missile and drone attacks on Israel and Gulf states since the war began, and at least 10 people have been killed in Israel, according to first responders. Qatar said it had been targeted by 10 Iranian drones on Friday, nine of which were intercepted. The other landed in an uninhabited area.
Drones struck airports and oil facilities in Iraq on Friday and targeted Iranian Kurdish opposition groups in the northern Kurdistan region, security officials said. Thirteen people, seven of them civilians, have been killed in Gulf countries since the war began, including an 11-year-old girl, Elena Abdullah Hussein, in Kuwait. Two hours before she died, the girl called her father at work to tell him she loved him. “It was as if she was trying to say goodbye,” the girl’s father, Abdullah Hussein, told AFP at her funeral.
© 2024 AFP
