Iran targets Israel and Gulf neighbours as Trump talks of winding down war

Iran fired more missiles at Israel and Gulf Arab states on Thursday, demonstrating Tehran’s continued ability to attack even as US President Donald Trump claimed the threat from the country was nearly eliminated and predicted the war would end soon.

Iran’s strikes on its neighbours along with its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz have disrupted the world’s energy supplies with effects far beyond the Middle East.

That has proved to be Iran’s greatest strategic advantage in the war.

The UK planned to hold a call with nearly three dozen countries about how to reopen the strait once the fighting is over.

Mr Trump has said the strait can be taken by force but that it is not up to the US to do that.

In his address to the American people on Wednesday he encouraged countries that depend on oil from Hormuz to “build some delayed courage” and go “take it”.

Before the US and Israel started the war on February 28 with strikes on Iran, 20% of all traded oil used passed through the waterway.

Iran responded defiantly to Mr Trump’s speech, in which the American president claimed US military action had been so decisive that “one of the most powerful countries” is “really no longer a threat”.

A spokesman for Iran’s military said on Thursday that Tehran maintains hidden stockpiles of arms, munitions and production facilities.

“The centres you think you have targeted are insignificant, and our strategic military productions take place in locations of which you have no knowledge and will never reach,” Lt Col Ebrahim Zolfaghari said.

Just before Mr Trump began his address, in which he said US “core strategic objectives are nearing completion”, explosions were heard in Dubai as air defences worked to intercept an Iranian missile barrage.

Less than half an hour after the president finished his speech, Israel said its military was also working to intercept incoming missiles. Sirens sounded in Bahrain, home to the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, immediately after the speech.

Attacks continued across Iran on Thursday, with strikes reported in multiple cities.

More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran during the war, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel. More than two dozen people have died in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank, while 13 US service members have been killed.

More than 1,200 people have been killed and more than one million displaced in Lebanon, home to Iran-backed Hezbollah militants who are fighting Israel. Ten Israeli soldiers have also died there.

Iranian attacks on about two dozen commercial ships, and the threat of more, have halted nearly all traffic in the waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the open ocean.

Since March 1, traffic through the strait has dropped 94% over the same period last year, according to the Lloyds List Intelligence shipping data firm.

Two ships are confirmed to have paid a fee, the firm said, while others were allowed through based on agreements with their home governments.

In order to bypass Hormuz, Saudi Arabia has been piping more oil to a Red Sea port, and Iraq said on Thursday that it had started to take oil by lorries across Syria to the Mediterranean.

The 35 countries speaking on Thursday, including all G7 industrialised democracies except the US, as well as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, signed a declaration last month demanding Iran stop blocking the strait.

But no country appears willing to try to open the strait by force while the war is raging. There is a concern that Iran might limit traffic through the strait even after US and Israeli attacks on it cease.

The conflict is driving up prices for oil and natural gas, roiling stock markets, pushing up the cost of petrol and threatening to make a range of goods, including food, more expensive.

On Thursday, Brent crude, the international standard, rose again and was at 108 US dollars in spot trading, up about 50% from February 28.