DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Israel pledged to refrain from more strikes on a key Iranian gas field after Iran intensified attacks on oil and natural gas facilities around the Gulf, raising the stakes in a war that has sent shock waves through energy markets and the global economy.
On Friday, Iran kept up its wave of attacks launched at Israel that have sent millions of people to shelters, with sirens sounding across a wide swath of the north, from Haifa to the Galilee to the border with Lebanon. It came after an intense day that saw more than a dozen launches on Thursday alone, according to Israel’s military.
Israel responded with airstrikes on Tehran early Friday as Iranians marked Nowruz, or the Persian New Year.
Global fuel supplies were already under pressure because of Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil is transported.
The Islamic Republic’s retaliation for Israel’s attack on its South Pars gas field sent fuel prices soaring even higher and risked drawing Iran’s Arab neighbours directly into the conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Thursday that, at the request of U.S.President Donald Trump, Israel will hold off on any further attacks on the offshore gas field.
Since the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28, Iran’s top leaders have been killed in airstrikes and the country’s military capabilities have been severely degraded. Netanyahu said in a televised address that Iran no longer has the ability to enrich uranium or make ballistic missiles, although he did not provide evidence.
Still, Iran -- now led by the son of the supreme leader killed in the war’s opening salvo -- remains capable of missile and drone attacks.
Underscoring the danger to ships in the region, a vessel was set ablaze off the United Arab Emirates’ coast and another was damaged off Qatar. Efforts to bypass the strait were also under pressure: An Iranian drone hit a Saudi refinery on the Red Sea, which the country had hoped to use as an alternative route.
Brent crude oil, the international standard, briefly surged above US$119 a barrel, up more than 60 per cent since the war started. The European benchmark for natural gas prices also rose sharply and has roughly doubled in the past month.
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UN Security Council meets over Iran’s attacks on Gulf states
The United Nations Security Council held an urgent closed meeting Thursday during which Gulf countries stressed the need for Iran to halt attacks on them, said Bahrain’s UN Ambassador Jamal Alrowaiei, the Arab representative on the UN’s most powerful body.
But Iran has showed no signs of backing down. Saudi Arabia said its SAMREF refinery in the Red Sea port city of Yanbu was hit. Saudi Arabia had begun pumping large volumes of oil west toward the Red Sea to avoid the Strait of Hormuz.
Qatar, a key source of natural gas for world markets, said Iranian missiles that caused extensive damage to the Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas facility, reduced its exports by about 17 per cent and will cost about US$20 billion in lost revenue a year. The damage will take up to five years to repair, even though production at the facility had already been halted after earlier attacks.
Two oil refineries in Kuwait and gas operations in Abu Dhabi also were targeted by Iran, authorities said.
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Netanyahu says Iran’s military has been severely hit
At Thursday’s news conference, Netanyahu said: “Iran’s air defences have been rendered useless, their navy is lying at the bottom of the sea. ... Their air force is nearly destroyed.”
He said he hopes the Iranian people will rise up against the Islamic Republic that has ruled for nearly a half-century. There’s been no sign of any organized opposition since the war began, after Iranian authorities crushed mass protests in January.
The prime minister’s comments to foreign journalists came amid difficult days for Trump and Netanyahu, with a top U.S. intelligence official resigning and claiming Israel pushed Trump into the war, and Israel’s attacks on South Pars, which led to Iran’s retaliatory strikes on the region’s oil and gas fields.
“I misled no one,” Netanyahu said. “And I didn’t have to convince President Trump about the need to prevent Iran from developing its nuclear program.”
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that U.S. forces were attacking deeper into Iranian territory, with warplanes hunting Iranian boats in the strait and dropping 5,000-pound bombs on underground weapons-storage facilities.
Iran’s state TV, quoting a Revolutionary Guard statement, said the country’s air defence system hit an F-35 fighter jet. U.S. Central Command said an F-35 made an emergency landing after flying a combat mission over Iran. A command spokesman, Capt. Tim Hawkins, said the aircraft landed safely, the pilot was in “stable” condition and the incident was under investigation.
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Trump says he is not deploying troops to Iran
Iran condemned Israel’s attack on South Pars, the Iranian part of the world’s largest gas field, located offshore in the Persian Gulf and owned jointly with Qatar.
With some 80 per cent of power generated in Iran coming from natural gas, according to the International Energy Agency, the attack threatens the country’s electricity supplies.
After Trump requested Israel not attack South Pars, he also warned on social media that if Iran continued striking Qatar, the U.S. would “massively blow up the entirety” of the field.
Asked later about the possibility of U.S. ground troops being deployed to Iran, Trump responded: “No. I’m not putting troops anywhere.”
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Death toll climbs in third week of war
More than 1,300 people in Iran have been killed during the war. Israeli strikes against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon have displaced more than one million people, according to the Lebanese government, which says more than 1,000 people have been killed. Israel says it has killed more than 500 Hezbollah militants.
In Israel, 15 people have been killed by Iranian missile fire. Four people were also killed in the occupied West Bank by an Iranian missile strike overnight.
At least 13 U.S. military members have been killed.
By Jon Gambrell, David Rising, Mike Corder And Natalie Melzer
Melzer reported from Tzukim, Israel, Rising from Bangkok and Corder from The Hague, Netherlands. Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro in Washington, Julie Watson in San Diego, and Fatma Khaled in Cairo contributed to this report.
