Regional
Trump threatens to strike Iran’s Kharg Island oil network if shipping lanes remain blocked
Trump told reporters on Friday the U.S. Navy will “soon” start escorting tankers through the waterway.
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to order strikes on the petroleum infrastructure of Iran’s Kharg Island oil hub unless Tehran stopped attacking vessels in the vital Strait of Hormuz, a warning that could further roil markets already coping with a historic disruption in supply, Reuters reported.
Trump paired his ultimatum with a social media post saying the United States had “totally obliterated” military targets on the island, the export terminal for 90% of Iran’s oil shipments, which lies about 300 miles (483 km) northwest of the strait.
U.S. strikes did not target Kharg’s oil infrastructure, but “should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision,” Trump wrote.
Iran had no ability to defend against U.S. attacks, the president added. “Iran’s Military, and all others involved with this Terrorist Regime, would be wise to lay down their arms, and save what’s left of their country, which isn’t much!” he posted on Truth Social.
Iran’s armed forces responded on Saturday by saying any strike on their country’s oil and energy infrastructure would lead to strikes on facilities owned by oil companies cooperating with the United States in the region, Iranian media reported.
Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported, citing sources, that more than 15 explosions were heard on Kharg Island during the U.S. attacks. The sources said the attacks targeted air defenses, a naval base, and airport facilities, but caused no damage to oil infrastructure.
Markets were watching for any sign that U.S. strikes had damaged the island’s intricate network of pipelines, terminals and storage tanks. Even minor disruptions could further tighten global supply, adding pressure to an already volatile market.
In other strikes across the region, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said early Saturday that it had carried out additional attacks on Israel with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported.
On Friday, the Israeli military said its air force had struck more than 200 targets in western and central Iran over the past day, including ballistic missile launchers, air-defence systems and weapons production sites.
U.S. forces have suffered casualties. The U.S. military on Friday confirmed that all six crew members aboard a refuelling aircraft that crashed in western Iraq were dead, read the report.
Five U.S. Air Force tankers at a base in Saudi Arabia had been damaged by an Iranian missile strike and were being repaired, reported The Wall Street Journal, citing U.S. officials.
Oil prices have swung sharply on Trump’s changing comments about the likely duration of the war, which began on February 28 with massive U.S. and Israeli bombardments of Iran and quickly spread into a regional conflict with broad consequences for worldwide energy and stock markets.
Lebanon became an escalating flashpoint in the war with Israel’s military and Hezbollah forces exchanging strikes in and around Beirut.
In addition to Iran’s missile and aerial drone attacks on Israel and Gulf state allies of the U.S., Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has sought to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for 20% of the world’s fossil energy supplies.
Trump told reporters on Friday the U.S. Navy will “soon” start escorting tankers through the waterway.
Although he has previously said the war would last only weeks, Trump on Friday declined to publicly project an end date for the conflict.
“I can’t tell you that,” he said to reporters. “I mean, I have my own idea, but what good does it do? It’ll be as long as it’s necessary.”
Iran continued to export crude oil while other producers in the Gulf halted their shipments for fear of Iranian attacks.
Multiple very large crude oil tankers were loading at Kharg on Wednesday, according to satellite imagery reviewed by TankerTrackers.com. Iran exported between 1.1 million barrels per day and 1.5 million bpd from February 28 to Wednesday.
Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, said Trump’s comments on Friday “will focus the market’s mind on pathways that this energy disruption, already history’s largest, could expand and last longer.”
Some energy industry observers expressed doubts that Kharg’s oil facilities would stay intact.
“Bombing Kharg Island but not the oil infrastructure is like going to McDonald’s and getting a hamburger with no meat,” said Josh Young, chief investment officer at Bison Interests. “What’s the point?”
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, in his first public comments on Thursday, vowed to keep the Strait of Hormuz shut and urged neighbouring countries to close U.S. bases on their territory or risk being attacked themselves.
European powers are trying to work out how to defend their interests, and France has been consulting with European, Asian and Gulf Arab states over the past week with a view to putting together a plan for warships eventually to escort tankers through the strait, French officials said.
After nearly two weeks of war, 2,000 people have been killed, most in Iran, but many in Lebanon and a growing number in the Gulf, which has for the first time in decades of Middle East conflicts found itself on the front line.
Several million people have been displaced from their homes. As Israeli warplanes pounded Beirut’s suburbs with air strikes, Lebanon’s interior minister said authorities were unable to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of people who have sought refuge in the capital.
Regional
Suspected suicide bombing at police station kills at least 14 in Pakistan, officials say
At least 14 people were killed in a suspected suicide bombing outside a police station in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, a rescue group and a regional police official said, as the country battles widening insurgencies.
The explosion took place in the Kabal area of Swat, a district in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Reuters reported.
A pro-police rally of local residents was taking place in the same area on Sunday, but it was not immediately clear whether the rally was the intended target.
Fida Hussain, a regional police official, said the victims included five police officers and eight civilians. The 14th person was believed to be the suicide bomber, he told Reuters.
At least 18 people were wounded, according to a police statement. It said an operation had been launched to arrest anyone who may have assisted the attack.
Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif in a statement expressed “deep grief and sorrow over the suicide blast”.
Regional
Bomb carried by woman kills three, injures 21 near Moscow restaurant, authorities say
A homemade bomb carried by a woman killed three people and injured at least 21 in an explosion near an upscale restaurant in central Moscow on Saturday evening, the authorities said.
The explosion occurred just before 2000 local time close to an Italian restaurant located in one of Moscow’s seven Stalin-era skyscrapers at Kudrinkskaya Square, the police said, Reuters reported.
Russia’s Anti-Terrorism Committee said that an unidentified woman had tried to get into the restaurant but was stopped by a security guard, the state RIA news agency reported.
It said the woman, the security guard and a customer at the Balzi Rossi Italian restaurant had been killed in the blast that followed.
Those injured received wounds of varying seriousness, the police said.
Russia’s state RIA news agency released video of heavily armed law enforcement officers at the scene, which had been closed off to the public.
The authorities did not name those killed or injured nor did they say who they thought might have been responsible.
More than four years into a full-scale war with Ukraine, Russia’s FSB security service said earlier this year that authorities would step up protection for high-ranking military officials after a series of assassinations and attempted killings it blamed on Kyiv.
The Kommersant daily newspaper cited its own sources as saying that the bomb had been intended to maim and kill guests who were enjoying themselves on the restaurant’s summer terrace outside.
It suggested that the bomb had been set off by someone else remotely and that the woman carrying it may not have known that it was an explosive device.
The restaurant’s website said the venue had been closed on Saturday for a private event.
Regional
Trump says he will hold off on fresh Iran attack in hope of quick deal
The Saudi crown prince spoke to Trump, a White House official told Reuters, but did not provide details.
U.S. President Donald Trump said late on Saturday he would hold off on a fresh attack on Iran as long as a deal could be reached quickly to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Reuters reported.
Iran and “other Middle Eastern Countries” asked for a time to complete a deal that would lead to “the Immediate, Complete and Total” reopening of the Strait and “an end to Iran’s nuclear threat,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Based on this request, I have agreed, for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL.”
Israel “joins me in this commitment,” Trump wrote. Israel did not immediately make a public statement on the issue.
Iran warned the U.S. this weekend against any “adventurous action” and said it would retaliate decisively if American forces followed through on Trump’s threats of fresh attacks on Iranian targets.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi’s comments in separate phone calls on Saturday with senior Turkish, Pakistani and Saudi officials came just hours after Kuwait’s army said it destroyed hostile drones launched by Iran against several vital facilities.
Speaking to Pakistan’s Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Araqchi said Iran would respond decisively to any “aggression” and discussed the consequences of “destabilizing actions” by the U.S., as well as prospects for heightened regional insecurity, according to Araqchi’s Telegram account.
Araqchi later told Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan that any attacks by the U.S. and Israel or participation by regional countries in such actions would be met with a “proportionate response.” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke to Trump on Saturday and “expressed concern and asked for clarity” about U.S. plans for Iran, a U.S. official told Axios.
The Saudi crown prince spoke to Trump, a White House official told Reuters, but did not provide details.
Nournews, a media outlet affiliated with Iran’s top security body, said on Saturday that U.S. attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure would prompt Iranian strikes on oil fields in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the gas fields of Qatar and Israel, saying, “all will be burned to ashes.”
At a cabinet meeting on Friday at the Camp David retreat, Trump said he believed U.S. negotiators, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, could still reach a deal with Iran, read the report.
But Trump also said he was losing faith in the Iranians, saying, “They break their word so often” — a claim Tehran has frequently leveled at Washington — and said he would be “hitting them.”
Oil prices have stayed high since U.S. and Israeli forces started the war with strikes on Iran on February 28. Trump has argued that his stated goal of keeping Iran from gaining nuclear weapons justifies higher fuel costs in the near term, but the economic pain has put political pressure on him to find a way to end the war.
Benchmark Brent crude futures rose 24% in July, and analysts polled by Reuters expect prices to rise further this year.
The risk of Iranian attacks has deterred most shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, an important conduit for global energy supplies, since the start of the conflict, sending shockwaves through the world economy.
A government facility in northern Kuwait and civilian property belonging to a company on Bubiyan Island were hit on Saturday, with falling shrapnel causing material damage but no casualties, the Kuwaiti army said.
Adding to the energy industry’s concerns, Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen recently began threatening the Bab el-Mandeb, the strait at the other end of the Red Sea from the Suez Canal, another export route for Saudi crude.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations said on Saturday it had received reports of two maritime incidents off Oman, including one in which a tanker was struck by an unknown projectile that damaged the engine room. In the other incident, the master of a tanker reported seeing a large splash and an explosion close to the vessel, though no damage was reported.
-
Latest News3 days agoPakistan’s governance system has ‘collapsed’: Mohsin Naqvi
-
Sport5 days agoAfghanistan set for crucial five-match ODI series against Ireland
-
Sport5 days agoAfghanistan futsal team heads to Thailand for Continental Championship
-
Latest News5 days agoMSF urges Pakistan to halt forced returns of Afghan refugees
-
Business5 days agoAfghanistan exports first stone shipment to US in $100,000 trade milestone
-
Sport3 days agoQosh Tepa crowned champions of inaugural Afghanistan Wrestling Premier League
-
Regional5 days agoOman presents Iran with Gulf-backed plan for voluntary fees to use Hormuz
-
Latest News5 days agoGermany deports first Afghan without criminal record since 2021, Reuters reports
