New Tweets

Wars 2026 02/28 Israel-Iran War 3.0

G War Archive
Wars 2026 02/28 Israel-Iran War 3.0
50
506
More threads by RayKalm


Iran vows to block Gulf oil until bombing stops

Agence France-Presse . Tehran, Iran 10 March, 2026, 14:53

1773208566047.webp


A man rides a motorcycle past a banner displayed at Valiasr Square in central Tehran on March 10, 2026, depicting Iran's late supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (L) watching as his successor the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (C) hands over a national flag to his son and new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei. | AFP photo

Iran vowed on Tuesday that not one litre of oil would be exported from the Gulf while the United States and Israel continue their bombardment, as the United Arab Emirates closed its biggest oil refinery after a drone attack.

  • Trump says war will end ‘soon’
  • Netanyahu predicts conflict would continue
  • Israeli military begins new wave of strikes on Tehran
  • Experts warn economic outlook remains extremely volatile
  • Iran targets US base in Iraq

Oil prices have surged since Iranian attacks on shipping closed the Strait of Hormuz in the wake of a US-Israeli strikes that killed Tehran’s supreme leader but fell back somewhat on Monday when US president Donald Trump suggested the war would soon end.

The price began to rise again Tuesday amid more threats and violence, following a week of attacks on oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and around the Gulf.

The region’s biggest single-site oil refinery, at Ruwais in the UAE, was closed on Tuesday as a precaution after a drone attack on the industrial complex which houses it caused a fire, a source familiar with the situation said.

‘The Strait of Hormuz will either be a strait of peace and prosperity for all or will be a strait of defeat and suffering for warmongers,’ Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani declared.

The price increase also followed strikes on oil depots in Iran and after attacks on oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and around the Gulf, which continued on Tuesday, with explosions heard in Doha.

Qatar, where a suspension of LNG exports has sent European energy prices sky-high, said Iranian attacks on its civilian infrastructure were continuing.

The Israeli military announced meanwhile a new wave of attacks on Tehran, while the US also stepped up its air and missile assault.

‘Today will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran,’ defence secretary Pete Hegseth told a news conference at the Pentagon.

US and Israeli strikes have hit an airport in southern Iran, damaging part of the site as well as aircraft, local media reported on Tuesday.

‘Following an American-Zionist attack on Kerman Airport, part of it was damaged and two old, out-of-service aircraft were hit,’ Iran’s Tasnim news agency said, quoting a statement from the governor’s office in the southern province of Kerman.

The exchanges of fire will increase fears of economic instability, with traders and energy policy makers nervously following events in the Gulf, source of around a fifth of world oil and gas supplies.

‘There would be catastrophic consequences for the world’s oil markets the longer the disruption goes on, and the more drastic the consequences for the global economy,’ Saudi oil giant Aramco’s president and CEO Amin H Nasser told journalists.

‘It’s absolutely critical that shipping resumes in the Strait of Hormuz.’

Egypt increased the cost of fuels by up to 30 per cent and Pakistan said it would provide naval escorts to commercial shipping. France has dispatched warships to the region.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps mocked Trump’s bid to lessen the economic impact of the war, warning: ‘The Iranian armed forces will not allow the export of a single litre of oil from the region to the hostile side and its partners until further notice.’

‘It is we who will determine the end of the war,’ the IRGC, seen as close to Iran’s new supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, said in a statement carried by Iranian media.

Larijani issued a thinly veiled threat to Trump himself, warning him to be careful ‘not to be eliminated’.

‘Iran is not afraid of your empty threats. Even those greater than you could not eliminate the Iranian nation,’ Larijani wrote, in a social media post.

Iran’s warnings came as a response to Trump, who gave a news conference in a Florida ballroom to declare of the war: ‘It’s going to be ended soon, and if it starts up again they’ll be hit even harder.’

‘We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough,’ Trump said Monday.

But, in a later post on his social media platform, Trump warned that if Tehran interferes with oil exports, the US military will bomb the country in such a way to ‘make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a nation, again.’

‘Death, fire, and fury will reign upon them — But I hope, and pray, that it does not happen!’ he wrote.

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu also predicted that the conflict would continue, expressing hope that the Iranian people would seize the opportunity to ‘cast off the yoke of tyranny’.

‘Ultimately, it depends on them. But there is no doubt that, with the actions taken so far, we are breaking their bones, and we are not done yet,’ he said.

A new strike hit Lebanon’s southern city of Tyre, state media reported. The strike came after Israel’s military said it would hit Hezbollah targets there and in Sidon, telling residents to move away at least 300 metres from buildings that it said were Hezbollah’s military infrastructure.

Ankara said a US-made Patriot missile defence system would be deployed to central Turkey, a day after NATO shot down a second ballistic missile fired from Iran in Turkish airspace.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they targeted a US base in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, the Al-Harir air base, with five missiles.

Pakistan’s navy said its ships began escorting merchant vessels ‘to ensure the uninterrupted flow of national energy supplies and the security of sea lines of communication’.

The Tehran-backed Kataeb Imam Ali armed group said four of its fighters were killed in air strikes it blamed on the US in northern Iraq, in the Debs district in Kirkuk province.

On Monday, world oil prices swept past the symbolic level of $100 a barrel and were briefly up 30 per cent on the day, before falling back after Trump’s intervention. But they rose again more slowly on Tuesday, and experts warned that the economic outlook remains extremely volatile.

‘Rare are days in the markets when you get this much volatility,’ said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, an analyst for Swissquote Bank, warning that investors are overreacting to every bit of news even when officials’ statements contradict each other.

‘Part of yesterday’s optimism came after Trump said the war would end ‘soon’ and that the US was ahead of schedule,’ she said.

‘Concretely, however, the conflict in the Middle East continues at full speed, political developments are not pointing to a near-term resolution, and there is little clarity about the US plans.’​
 
Analyze

Analyze Post

Add your ideas here:
Highlight Cite Respond

Iran’s new supreme leader ‘safe and sound’ despite war injury reports: president’s son

AFP
Tehran
Published: 11 Mar 2026, 13: 33

1773276799793.webp

Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran's late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Reuters

Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei is “safe and sound” despite reports of an injury during the war with Israel and the United States, said the son of the Iranian president on Wednesday.

“I heard news that Mr Mojtaba Khamenei had been injured. I have asked some friends who had connections. They told me that, thank God, he is safe and sound,” said Yousef Pezeshkian, who is also a government adviser, in a post on his Telegram channel.

State television had called Khamenei a “wounded veteran of the Ramadan war” but never specified his injury.

The new supreme leader is the son and successor of the Islamic republic’s longtime ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in US-Israeli strikes on Iran on 28 February which triggered a war across the Middle East.

The 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei, a discreet figure who has rarely appeared in public or spoken at official events, has yet to address the nation or issue a written statement since he was declared supreme leader on Sunday.

In a Wednesday report, the New York Times quoting three unnamed Iranian officials said that Khamenei “had suffered injuries, including to his legs, but that he was alert and sheltering at a highly secure location with limited communication”.​
 
Analyze

Analyze Post

Add your ideas here:
Highlight Cite Respond

Iran tells world to get ready for $200 a barrel

Reuters, Dubai/Tel Aviv

1773277255210.webp

Tankers sail in the Gulf, near the Strait of Hormuz, as seen from northern Ras al-Khaimah, near the border with Oman’s Musandam governance, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in United Arab Emirates, March 11, 2026. Photo: Reuters/Stringer
  • Three ships hit in the Gulf​
  • IEA to propose fastest ever release of strategic oil reserves​
  • Explosions in Bahrain and Dubai​

Iran's military command said on Wednesday the world should be prepared for oil to hit $200 a barrel, as three more ships came under attack in the blockaded Gulf.

Iran fired at Israel and targets across the Middle East on Wednesday, demonstrating it can still fight back and disrupt energy supplies despite what the Pentagon has described as the most intense US-Israeli strikes yet.

Oil prices that shot up earlier this week have eased and stock markets have rebounded, with investors betting for now that US President Donald Trump will find a quick way to end the war he began alongside Israel nearly two weeks ago.

But so far there has been no let-up on the ground, or any sign that ships can safely sail through the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world's oil has been blockaded behind a narrow channel along the Iranian coast in the worst disruption to energy supplies since the oil shocks of the 1970s.

"Get ready for oil to be $200 a barrel, because the oil price depends on regional security which you have destabilised," Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesperson for Iran's military command, said in comments addressed to the United States.

After offices of a bank in Tehran were hit overnight, Zolfaqari also said Iran would respond with attacks on banks that do business with the United States or Israel. People across the Middle East should stay 1,000 metres from banks, he added.

A senior Israeli official told Reuters Israeli leaders now privately accepted that Iran's ruling system could survive the war. Two other Israeli officials said there was no sign Washington was close to ending the campaign.

Iranian official says Mojtaba Khamenei lightly wounded

In the latest public display of defiance, huge crowds of Iranians took to the streets on Wednesday for funerals for top commanders killed in airstrikes. They carried caskets and brandished flags and portraits of slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his son and successor, Mojtaba.

An Iranian official told Reuters thatMojtaba Khamenei had been lightly wounded early in the war, when airstrikes killed his father, mother, wife and a son. He has not appeared in public or issued any direct message since the war began.

A source also said Israel believed he had been lightly hurt.

The Iranian military said on Tuesday it had launched missiles at a US base in northern Iraq, the US naval headquarters for the Middle East in Bahrain, and at targets in central Israel. Explosions rang out in Bahrain, while in Dubai four people were wounded by two drones that crashed near the airport.

Bahrain's Civil Aviation Affairs said on Wednesday that several Gulf Air aircraft without passengers, and some cargo airplanes, were relocated to alternative airports to "ensure the continuity and efficiency of air operations" during the crisis.

In Tehran, residents said they were growing accustomed to nightly airstrikes that have sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing to the countryside and contaminated the city with black rain from oil smoke.

"There were bombings last night but I did not get scared like before. Life goes on," Farshid, 52, told Reuters by phone.

IEA to propose huge release of oil reserves

Three more merchant ships were struck in the Gulf by unknown projectiles, according to agencies that monitor maritime security, raising the number of ships reportedly hit since the war began to 14.

Crew were evacuated from a Thai-flagged bulk freighter after an explosion caused a fire. A Japanese-flagged container ship and a Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier also sustained damage.

Oil prices, which shot up briefly to nearly $120 a barrel on Monday, have since settled around $90, suggesting investors are betting Trump will be able to halt the war and reopen the strait soon.

But governments are still discussing drastic action. The International Energy Agency was expected to recommend releasing 400 million barrels from global strategic reserves, a record.

That would take months and amount to just three weeks' flow through the strait.

Israel says no time limit on campaign

US and Israeli officials say their aim is to end Iran's ability to project force beyond its borders and destroy its nuclear programme, though they have also invited Iranians to topple the country's clerical rulers.

Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday the operation "will continue without any time limit, as long as required, until we achieve all objectives and win the campaign”.

But the longer the war goes on, the greater the risk to the global economy, and if it ends with Iran's system of clerical rule surviving, Tehran is certain to declare victory.

Iran's police chief, Ahmadreza Radan, said on Wednesday anyone taking to the streets would be treated "as an enemy, not a protester. All our security forces have their fingers on the trigger".

Iran has said it would not let oil through the strait until US-Israeli attacks ceased, and it would not negotiate. Trump has threatened to hit Iran "twenty times harder" if it blockaded the strait, but US officials have not revealed any military plan to unblock it.

In Israel, explosions rang out before dawn from air defences intercepting missiles. Sirens sent Israelis to shelters.

Israel also launched a barrage on Beirut aimed at rooting out the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, which has fired into Israel from Lebanon in solidarity with Tehran.

More than 1,300 Iranian civilians have been killed since the US and Israeli airstrikes began on February 28, according to Iran's UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani. Scores have also been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

Iranian strikes on Israel have killed at least 11 people and two Israeli soldiers have died in Lebanon. Washington says seven US soldiers have been killed and around 140 have been wounded.​
 
Analyze

Analyze Post

Add your ideas here:
Highlight Cite Respond

Members Online

Latest Posts

Back
PKDefense - Recommended Toggle