War returns to Iran with Israel, US strikes

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says that the country is facing its most intense blockade since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, accusing the United States of seeking to provoke public protests, AFP reports.

“Over the 48 years since the Revolution, we have never faced such an intense blockade, war and difficulties as we are facing now,” Pezeshkian said in a speech broadcast by state television.

He accused Washington of seeking to make life difficult for Iranians in order to fuel public anger and trigger unrest.

Pezeshkian said the US was focusing its efforts on making “the people become upset and face difficulties, and then for social protests to emerge so that they can achieve their sinister objectives”.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has warned that military action cannot force a country into submission amid the US-Israel war on Iran, adding that his country “must find a way to strengthen national cohesion and unity,” Al Jazeera reports.

A summit between the European Union and Gulf countries in Riyadh has been postponed, Brussels has said, as Saudi Arabia faces sustained attacks from Yemen’s Houthis, AFP reports.

“The second Summit between the European Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council, originally planned for 24 October 2026 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has been postponed. A new date will be announced in due course,” the European Council representing the bloc’s member states said.

Shifting geopolitics and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East will have a lasting impact on world trade flows as companies hedge their bets against future shocks, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director general of the World Trade Organisation, told Reuters.

Trade had contracted sharply in the Middle East as a result of the Iran war, despite a series of workarounds, and would take some time to bounce back, Okonjo-Iweala said in an interview, adding that some of the shifts could become permanent. The WTO forecast a 17 per cent drop in exports this year, with imports down about 15pc.

Yemen’s Houthis said they did not carry out any attack on the Madina region , shortly after Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted a missile targeting the area of the holy city, AFP reports.

“The Yemeni armed forces confirm that they have not carried out any operation today targeting Saudi territory, and that the Saudi enemy’s claims of an attack on Madina are a shameless and brazen lie,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree wrote on X.

Lebanese Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah has said that a car carrying hundreds of kilograms of explosives seized by Lebanese security forces earlier this week belonged to the group, as the government presses ahead with efforts to disarm Hezbollah, Reuters reports.

Deputy chief of the Iranian Army for coordination Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari says the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and that any passage through the strategic waterway must be coordinated with Iranian forces who maintain full control and surveillance over the area, IRNA reports.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a ceremony honoring army nurses, Sayyari said the situation was evident from oil flows and rising gasoline prices in the United States.

He said the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy maintains a strong presence west of the Strait of Hormuz, while the Iranian Army operates east of it, extending northward into the Sea of Oman.

If any passage takes place, it must be coordinated; otherwise, people will see in the news what happens, Sayyari said.

The Saudi-led military coalition said it had intercepted a cruise missile in the Madina region — home to one of Islam’s holiest cities that the Houthis previously vowed not to target, AFP reports.

“Interception and destruction of a cruise missile in the Madina region,” coalition spokesman Turki Al-Malki wrote, with the statement also published by state media.

The Yemeni army says its air defence units have intercepted a Saudi Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jet over the northwestern province of Sa’ada, as hostilities between the two sides have entered a new phase of intensified air strikes and cross-border attacks, Press Tv reports.

Spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, announced in a statement early on Thursday that the supersonic and multirole warplane was struck by a locally manufactured surface-to-air missile while conducting hostile operations.

Saree added that the warplane, which had taken off from King Fahd Air Base in Taif, sustained a direct hit as a result of the strike and had to leave Yemeni airspace.

The Asian Cup scheduled for January in Saudi Arabia could be moved back a year to 2028 “if we need to”, the continent’s top football official said, following a series of Houthi attacks on the country, AFP reports.

But AFC president Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa also said they were in “no hurry” to make a decision over Asia’s premier football tournament.

The 2027 Asian Cup is supposed to kick off on January 7 in the Saudi cities of Jeddah, Riyadh and Al Khobar.

The kingdom has in recent days come under sustained attack in a dramatic escalation in the war with the Iran-backed Houthi group.

US President Donald Trump said that the war with Iran would end “very soon,” predicting that oil prices would fall sharply once the conflict concludes, Anadolu reports.

“The Iran war will end very soon … Soon, as they want it to end,” Trump told reporters in Montana.

“They’ll never have a nuclear weapon, and oil prices will drop like a rock.”

Earlier, addressing a rally in Montana, Trump expressed uncertainty over which Iranian officials the US was negotiating with as Washington sought to end the conflict.

“They don’t have a navy. They don’t have an air force. Their army is decimated. Their leaders are gone.

“I should have probably left their leaders because I don’t know who the hell we’re negotiating with,” he said.

Oil prices fell more than 1 per cent as investors weighed risks to supply from attacks on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz against US efforts to cut petroleum shipping costs by easing sanctions on vessels, Reuters reports.

Brent crude futures fell $1.76, or 1.7 per cent, to $104.3 a barrel by 0625 GMT, while US West Texas Intermediate crude futures were down $1.06, or 1.1pc, to $94.03, reversing gains from the previous session.

WTI rose to a three-week high in the prior session after Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis attacked Saudi Aramco’s headquarters and Tehran said it was deploying new tactics to target ships in the Strait of Hormuz and keep oil prices high.

A container ship and a dry bulk carrier both sank near the strait in the past 24 hours after being hit by projectiles in separate incidents, maritime officials said on Wednesday.

Millions could be thrown into poverty by surging energy costs, the impact of an intense El Nino phenomenon and higher interest rates, with vulnerable countries being pushed to the brink by repeated crises, the UN’s development chief told AFP.

Global fuel prices have soared since the United States launched its war on Iran in late February, with Tehran’s retaliations against Washington’s Gulf allies curtailing major oil and natural gas supplies.

Fiscal deficits and debt-to-GDP ratios around the world have ballooned since the 2008 global financial crisis, with governments firefighting against a series of shocks including the pandemic and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

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Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has held a telephone conversation with his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty, the Foreign Office (FO) said.

“The two leaders discussed the latest regional developments and underscored that dialogue and diplomacy remain the only way forward to address all issues,” the FO said.

They reaffirmed their resolve to continue supporting efforts to advance dialogue and de-escalation and agreed to remain closely engaged on all matters of mutual interest, it added.

Prolonged war in the Middle East and further disruptions to energy production, shipping routes or critical infrastructure pose the biggest risk to economies in the Middle East and Central Asia, the International Monetary Fund has said, Reuters reports.

Jihad Azour, the IMF’s director for the Middle East and Central Asia, told reporters the war was imposing a highly uneven economic shock to the broader region, with directly affected states under severe pressure.

“The outlook depends critically on how quickly energy production and trade normalise, and on countries ability to preserve macroeconomic stability,” Azour said at a news conference during the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Bangkok.

Pre-war surpluses, alternative routes, demand adjustments and substantial inventory drawdowns had helped contain the impact of the energy shock caused by the US-Israeli-led attacks on Iran and Tehran’s subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

“These buffers bought time, but they are finite. Inventories are lower, spare capacity is tighter, and renewed disruption could generate much larger price adjustments,” he said.

Oil prices fell more than 1 per cent as investors weighed risks to supply from attacks on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz against US efforts to cut petroleum shipping costs by easing sanctions on vessels, reports Reuters.

Brent crude futures fell $1.64, or 1.6pc, to $104.42 a barrel by 0337 GMT, while US West Texas Intermediate crude futures were down 98 cents, or 1pc, to $94.11, reversing gains from the previous session.

WTI rose to a three-week high in the prior session after the Houthis attacked Saudi Aramco’s headquarters and Iran said it was deploying new tactics to target ships in the Strait of Hormuz and keep oil prices high.

The US military has developed new strike plans that include potentially using the so-called “mother of all bombs” to target Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites should President Donald Trump give the order to resume combat operations either before or after the midterm elections, according to multiple US officials familiar with the matter, CNN reports.

Using the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB, the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal, for the first time in the conflict with Iran would mark a notable escalation, even though there are doubts over how effective it would be in accomplishing any of Trump’s stated strategic objectives or tipping the balance of the war, multiple sources familiar with internal military planning discussions about potentially deploying the weapon said.

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The Trump administration is considering easing sanctions on so-called shadow fleet vessels that have transported oil and petroleum products from countries including Russia, Iran and Venezuela, in an effort to reduce record-high global freight rates, a US official says, Reuters reports.

The new talks centre on the United States potentially allowing “legal oil” to flow on previously sanctioned vessels, the US official said. That means crude or petroleum products not sanctioned by Washington, rather than Russian and Iranian oil, which are under punitive measures.

The goal is to get more refined products and crude out of the Gulf, the official said.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a video to the World Petroleum Congress in Riyadh this week that the administration was talking about easing the sanctions on shadow fleet vessels in an effort to cut record freight rates that have cut into demand for US crude, according to Energy Aspects, a research group.

Bits of the talk were broadcast on social media, but Reuters was not able to obtain the full video or a transcript. The Department of Energy said it was not available.

A failure by the United States and Iran to agree within weeks on a UN-backed plan for moving fertiliser through the Strait of Hormuz could cause a food security crisis in parts of Asia and Africa, an official overseeing the proposed scheme says, Reuters reports.

“It’s absolutely crucial to get the deal in the next few weeks. Otherwise, we will miss the planting season,” he said in an interview in Bangkok, on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings.

In response to questions from Reuters, a US State Department spokesman said the US military has assisted thousands of commercial vessels with transiting the strait.

“The United States will continue to take decisive action against Iran’s attempts to disrupt freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and hold the global economy hostage,” he said.

Iran’s army spokesperson Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia says that the US has not been this strategically isolated since World War II, according to state-run IRNA.

He also alleged that “by waging an unlawful war against Iran, America aims to wipe out Iranian-Islamic civilisation”.

Iran’s Parliament speaker Bagher Ghalibaf says that Iran must “both fight and negotiate” in order to achieve its goals: “Whenever we achieve victory on the battlefield, we must consolidate the field of victory in the political sphere,” he says, according to state-run Fars news agency.

“This does not mean endless war and prolonged negotiation. We fight to exhaust the enemy so that it is forced to yield to our demands,” he added.

Yemen’s Houthis say they have targeted Riyadh’s international airport with a ballistic missile, hours after the Saudi-led coalition reported an interception of one fired towards the capital, AFP reports.

“The Yemeni Armed Forces… were able to target King Khalid International Airport in the Saudi enemy’s capital, Riyadh, with a ballistic missile, and the hit was accurate,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree posted on X.

The Yemeni government forces say they have carried out 2,309 “targeting operations” against the Houthis, as part of their military campaign to recapture Houthi-held territory across Yemen, Al Jazeera reports.

The operations were conducted by the government forces using combat aircraft, drones, artillery and rocket launchers, and destroyed 460 Houthi military vehicles, according to claims made by the forces’ spokesperson, Majeed al-Nuzaili.

Al-Nuzaili said air strikes in Taiz continue to thwart the Houthis’ efforts to “compensate for losses and reorganise their forces”.

Iran’s Brigadier General Yadollah Javani, deputy for political affairs of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), says that US President Donald Trump is reluctant to accept defeat in the war is “anxiety” over the domestic repercussions of Iran’s victory, according to state-run IRNA.

Speaking at the Administrative Council of the northern province of Golestan, General Javani said that the war imposed on Iran was not labeled a world war, but global public opinion considers it one.

He explained that the Mideast war had the same nature and characteristics as World Wars I and II, which impacted the global order, the geometry of power, and the shifting power equation.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has discussed regional developments in a phone call with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and stressed the need to halt Israeli attacks on Lebanon, state-run IRNA reports.

Araghchi highlighted Iran’s concern over Israeli attacks and aggression against Lebanon, while Aoun emphasised the need for diplomatic solutions to regional crises.