Tehran (AFP) – US President Donald Trump said Friday that only Tehran’s unconditional surrender would bring an end to the escalating Middle East war as crude oil prices surged on fears about global supply disruption. As Israel intensified its air strikes on Lebanon and announced “broad-scale” strikes on Tehran, the US military said it had hit more than 3,000 targets during the first week of the US-Israeli war on Iran. The conflict has embroiled nations beyond the region, upended the world’s energy and transport sectors, and brought chaos to usually peaceful areas around the Gulf.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed for “serious diplomatic negotiations” and warned of a “situation that could spiral beyond anyone’s control.” 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 a week ago, 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.
Crude prices — already surging with the critical energy waterway the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf effectively blocked — rose further on Friday. The international benchmark oil contract, Brent North Sea crude, jumped to $92.69 per barrel, up 8.5 percent for the day and nearly 30 percent for the week.
US Central Command, responsible for US forces in the Middle East, said more than 3,000 Iranian targets have been struck, including command-and-control centers, air defense systems, missile sites, and navy ships and submarines. Six US service members have died, and Trump is to attend the return of their bodies at a dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Saturday. Israel continued to batter Beirut’s southern suburbs, where the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah holds sway, and the Lebanese health ministry said the death toll has risen to 217.
Israel also carried out strikes on Nabi Sheet in eastern Lebanon’s Baalbek district that the ministry said killed at least nine people. Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam warned that a “humanitarian disaster is looming,” and the Norwegian Refugee Council said 300,000 people in the country had been forced to flee. 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 pummeled by Israeli strikes on Friday, which AFP journalists described as among the heaviest days of bombardments yet on the Iranian capital. “It’s really very scary,” a Tehran businessman who gave his first name as Robert told AFP. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that strikes on Iran would “surge dramatically,” and Israel’s military chief Eyal Zamir said his country’s forces were “crushing the Iranian terrorist regime.” According to Iran’s health ministry, the US and Israeli strikes on the country have killed 926 people, a number AFP could not independently verify.
Iran has launched missile and drone attacks at Israel and Gulf states since the war began, with AFP journalists in Tel Aviv reporting hearing several blasts on Friday. 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. Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted a cruise missile.
Several airports in Iraq were hit by attacks on Friday, including a Baghdad airport complex that hosts a military base and a US diplomatic facility, Iraqi authorities said. The US embassy in Baghdad warned that Iranian-backed fighters may target hotels in Iraqi Kurdistan frequented by foreigners. Shortly afterwards, an explosion was heard in the city of Erbil, and smoke was seen rising from a hotel there. 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 the funeral.
© 2024 AFP
