Israel steps up campaign in Lebanon, as Iran keeps stranglehold on shipping

The war in the Mid­dle East raged on mul­ti­ple fronts on Mon­day, as the U.S. and Is­rael pum­meled mil­i­tary tar­gets in Iran’s cap­i­tal, Is­rael stepped up its cam­paign against Iran-backed mil­i­tants in Lebanon and Iran re­tal­i­at­ed with a drone strike that tem­porar­i­ly forced the clo­sure of Dubai’s air­port, a cru­cial hub for trav­el­ers.

Fears of a glob­al en­er­gy cri­sis per­sist­ed, even as a small num­ber of ships passed through the Strait of Hor­muz, a vi­tal wa­ter­way through which a fifth of the world’s oil is usu­al­ly trans­port­ed.

Iran­ian strikes on com­mer­cial ships in and around the strait, and even just the threat of those at­tacks, have slowed ship­ping there to a trick­le. That has dra­mat­i­cal­ly in­creased the price of oil and put pres­sure on Wash­ing­ton to do some­thing to ease the pain for con­sumers and the glob­al econ­o­my.

Brent crude, the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard, re­mained over $100 a bar­rel on Mon­day. U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said he has de­mand­ed that about sev­en coun­tries send war­ships to keep the Strait of Hor­muz open, but his ap­peals have brought no com­mit­ments.

Two In­di­an-flagged ships and a Pak­istani-flagged one crossed the strait this week­end, ac­cord­ing to au­thor­i­ties and a ma­rine-track­ing web­site.

Iran­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Ab­bas Araghchi said of the strait, “From our per­spec­tive it is open” — just not for the Unit­ed States, Is­rael and its al­lies. On so­cial me­dia, Araghchi al­so re­ject­ed as “delu­sion­al” claims that Iran was look­ing for a ne­go­ti­at­ed end to the war. He said it was seek­ing nei­ther “truce nor talks.”

Since the Unit­ed States and Is­rael at­tacked Iran more than two weeks ago, Tehran has reg­u­lar­ly fired drones and mis­siles at Is­rael, Amer­i­can bases in the re­gion, and Gulf Arab coun­tries’ en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture.

Is­rael hits Beirut and launch­es new at­tacks on Tehran

Mas­sive ex­plo­sions were heard in Beirut as Is­rael launched new at­tacks on the Lebanese cap­i­tal be­fore dawn, say­ing it was strik­ing in­fra­struc­ture re­lat­ed to the Iran-linked Hezbol­lah mili­tia group. Hezbol­lah be­gan fir­ing rock­ets in­to north­ern Is­rael af­ter the U.S.-Is­raeli at­tack of Iran on Feb. 28.

The Is­raeli army has is­sued evac­u­a­tion or­ders for many neigh­bor­hoods in Beirut as well as south­ern Lebanon.

Is­rael’s strikes have dis­placed more than 800,000 Lebanese from large swaths of the coun­try’s south­ern re­gion and its cap­i­tal’s south­ern sub­urbs, and some 850 peo­ple have been killed in Lebanon. Some Is­raeli troops have pushed in­to south­ern Lebanon, and there are fears that Is­rael is prepar­ing a large-scale in­va­sion.

In south­ern Lebanon, sev­en peo­ple were killed in Is­raeli airstrikes, ac­cord­ing to au­thor­i­ties and news re­ports.

Not long af­ter Is­rael’s mil­i­tary an­nounced it had launched new strikes on Tehran, tar­get­ing in­fra­struc­ture, ex­plo­sions were heard in the Iran­ian cap­i­tal and out­ly­ing ar­eas.

More de­tails were not im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able with in­for­ma­tion com­ing out of Iran se­vere­ly lim­it­ed by in­ter­net out­ages, round-the-clock airstrikes and tight re­stric­tions on jour­nal­ists.

More than 1,300 peo­ple have been killed in Iran so far, ac­cord­ing to the Iran­ian Red Cres­cent.

Is­rael has car­ried out some 7,600 strikes on Iran so far, knock­ing out 85% of its air de­fens­es and 70% of Iran’s mis­sile launch­ers, mil­i­tary spokesman Lt. Col. Na­dav Shoshani told re­porters Mon­day.

In Is­rael, 12 peo­ple have been killed by Iran­ian mis­sile fire. At least 13 U.S. mil­i­tary mem­bers have been killed.

Trump threat­ens to ‘re­mem­ber’ which al­lies do not help

The vir­tu­al shut­down of the Strait of Hor­muz is bat­ter­ing the world econ­o­my, dri­ving up en­er­gy and fer­til­iz­er prices; threat­en­ing food short­ages in poor coun­tries; desta­bi­liz­ing frag­ile states; and com­pli­cat­ing ef­forts by cen­tral banks to dri­ve down prices for con­sumers.

Trump said Sun­day he wants to po­lice the strait to make it safe for ship­ping. Trump did not iden­ti­fy the coun­tries he said he asked to help with those ef­forts, but he said he won’t for­get the coun­tries that de­cline. He has pre­vi­ous­ly ap­pealed to Chi­na, France, Japan, South Ko­rea and Britain.

“Whether we get sup­port or not, but I can say this, and I said to them: We will re­mem­ber,” Trump said.

Brent crude was above $101 in af­ter­noon trad­ing, up rough­ly 40% since the war be­gan. Many of­fi­cials have been scram­bling to ease prices. Fatih Birol, the head of the In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency, said its 32 mem­ber coun­tries still have ad­di­tion­al re­serves of 1.4 bil­lion bar­rels on top of the record 400 mil­lion they agreed to re­lease last week to ad­dress sup­ply con­straints.

Ad­mi­ral Brad Coop­er, the top U.S. mil­i­tary com­man­der in the Mid­dle East, said in a video post­ed on X that Amer­i­can forces are ze­ro­ing in on Iran’s threats to freighters car­ry­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas.

Eu­ro­peans have been crit­i­cal of the U.S. and Is­rael for fail­ing to pro­vide clar­i­ty on their ob­jec­tives in the war.

Ahead of a meet­ing in Brus­sels, the Eu­ro­pean Union’s for­eign pol­i­cy chief Ka­ja Kallas said the bloc’s for­eign min­is­ters would dis­cuss pos­si­bly ex­tend­ing a naval mis­sion that pro­tects ships in the Red Sea to the Strait of Hor­muz, with­out giv­ing any de­tails.

Ital­ian For­eign Min­is­ter An­to­nio Ta­jani told re­porters in Brus­sels that his coun­try fa­vors strength­en­ing an­ti-pira­cy and de­fen­sive mis­sions in the Red Sea, but said he didn’t be­lieve in ex­pand­ing their roles to the Strait of Hor­muz.

Prime Min­is­ter Keir Starmer of Britain, which is not an EU mem­ber, told re­porters that Britain and al­lies were work­ing on a plan to re­open the strait. Starmer said Britain might de­ploy mine-hunt­ing U.K. drones al­ready in the re­gion, but in­sist­ed it “will not be drawn in­to the wider war.” He sig­naled that the U.K. is un­like­ly to dis­patch a war­ship.

Japan and Aus­tralia both said Mon­day that they had not been asked to help pro­tect the strait and had no cur­rent plans to do so.

Iran hits Dubai air­port, shrap­nel falls in Jerusalem Old City

As morn­ing broke Mon­day, a drone hit a fu­el tank near Dubai In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, the world’s busiest for in­ter­na­tion­al pas­sen­ger traf­fic, caus­ing a large fire.

Fire­fight­ers con­tained the blaze and there were no in­juries re­port­ed, but the air­port sus­pend­ed all flights be­fore re­sum­ing them a few hours lat­er.

Lat­er, a per­son was killed in the cap­i­tal of the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates when an Iran­ian mis­sile hit a ve­hi­cle, the Abu Dhabi me­dia of­fice said. Fire al­so broke out at an oil fa­cil­i­ty in Fu­jairah, one of the UAE’s sev­en emi­rates, fol­low­ing a drone at­tack.

Sau­di Ara­bia, mean­while, said it in­ter­cept­ed a wave of 35 Iran­ian drones sent to its east­ern re­gion, home to ma­jor oil in­stal­la­tions.

In Is­rael, an in­ter­cept­ed Iran­ian mis­sile at­tack sprayed shrap­nel through Jerusalem’s Old City, hit­ting the rooftop of the Greek Or­tho­dox Pa­tri­ar­chate, just me­ters from the Church of the Holy Sepul­chre.

Is­rael’s Fire and Res­cue ser­vice said a large piece from an in­ter­cept­ed mis­sile al­so struck a home in East Jerusalem, and that an­oth­er large frag­ment land­ed in the yard of a home just north of the Old City. There were no re­ports of in­juries.

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP)