Attacks At Israel, Lebanon, Tehran, Homuz and G7 Meeting
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| Tehran |
U.S.-Israeli airstrikes damaged two major steel plants in Iran on Friday, Iran’s state broadcaster reported. The plants are located in the cities of Isfahan and Ahvaz.
The attack on the Mobarakeh Steel plant in Isfahan targeted an electrical substation and a steel production line, while the attack on the Khuzestan Steel plant in Ahvaz targeted storage sheds, the state broadcaster reported.
Oil prices rose and stocks fell on Friday morning, despite President Trump’s decision to back away from an imminent deadline to begin attacking Iran’s power grid. The S&P 500 dropped roughly 0.5 percent, on course for its fifth straight week of losses — the longest weekly losing streak for the index in roughly four years. Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose more than 2 percent to around $111 per barrel.
Hundreds of transport workers in the Philippines went on strike for a second straight day on Friday to protest a surge in fuel prices, days after the country’s president declared a national energy emergency stemming from the war in the Middle East.
Protesters in Manila, the capital, said that diesel prices had doubled since the war started on Feb. 28 and demanded that the government of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. take action to reduce fuel prices, increase transport fares and raise wages.
Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine
Ukraine has signed a defense cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday, laying the groundwork for future contracts in which Ukrainian companies could help the kingdom with its air defenses.
“We have reached an important arrangement,” Mr. Zelensky said on social media, adding that Ukraine was ready for long-term cooperation and hoped to become a force in global defense contracting.
As President Trump claimed progress in talks with Iran, Israeli attacks in Iran continued into Friday. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, indicated in a statement Friday that the country’s offensive would only intensify.
Missile launches toward Israel appear to have intensified. The Israeli military had said that it had detected at least 10 volleys throughout the day on Thursday and four more so far on Friday.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday the Feb. 28 U.S. strike on an elementary school in southern Iran that killed dozens of children was not a mistake, but a “calculated” assault. “They are targeting civilians and civilian infrastructures with no regard for laws of war and basic principles of humanity and civility,” Araghchi said by video to a session of the council focusing on the strike.
The New York Times reported this month that a preliminary U.S. investigation had determined that the strike was the result of a targeting mistake. The school building was formerly part of an adjacent Iranian military base that U.S. forces were striking. U.S. officials emphasized that the findings were preliminary and that questions remained about why the outdated information had not been double-checked. The investigation is ongoing.
The war in Iran is set to dominate a meeting of top diplomats from the Group of 7 nations on Friday morning in France, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio was expected to press European and Asian allies to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
An agenda provided by France’s foreign ministry, which is hosting the meeting in the town of Vaux-de-Cernay, near Paris, said the group would discuss efforts to stop the war, end Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile development, and reopen maritime trade routes.
Kuwait’s public works ministry said Mubarak al-Kabeer Port was attacked by drones and missiles on Friday. Initial reports said there was material damage but no injuries, according to the ministry.
Earlier on Friday, the Kuwait Ports Authority said that Shuwaikh Port was struck by a “hostile drone.”
One businessman, who lives in Tehran and spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal from the government, said he could hear the sound of jets and bombing on Thursday night and into early Friday morning. The booms of explosions mixed with the sound of thunder from a storm made it an especially frightening night, he said.
The Israeli military said Friday that it had struck targets across Tehran and western Iran overnight, including sites involved in the production of ballistic missiles. It also said that it had stuck Iran’s “primary facility for the production of missiles and sea mines” in the city of Yazd, without specifying when those strikes took place.
The Kuwait Ports Authority said that Shuwaikh Port near Kuwait City was attacked by a “hostile drone” on Friday. The ports authority said the drone caused material damage but no one was injured. The port authority describes Shuwaikh as Kuwait’s main commercial port.
Oil prices rose on Friday despite President Trump’s decision to back away from an imminent deadline to begin attacking Iran’s power grid. Global stock markets mostly moved lower.
On Thursday, after oil jumped to its highest level this week and the S&P 500 had its biggest daily decline since January, Mr. Trump said he would extend the deadline for negotiations with Iran by 10 days. He has claimed in recent days that he was making progress to end the Middle East war, which has choked critical supplies of energy, despite Iranian officials rebuffing those claims.
Six people were killed in a strike that damaged three homes in Iran’s Qom province, around 80 miles south of Tehran, the Fars news agency said on Friday. Morteza Haydari, an official at the Qom governor’s office, described the strike as a U.S.-Israeli attack, according to the report by Fars, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards.
The Israeli military said it had completed a “wide-scale wave of strikes” targeting government infrastructure in Tehran early on Friday morning.
Earlier, Press TV, an Iranian state news agency, said Iran had launched strikes at Israel.
Israelis were warned to shelter in place and soon after were released. There were no casualties reported.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will not hold a news conference this week, the Pentagon said on Thursday. That means it will be Monday at the earliest until the two leaders take questions from reporters on the state of the Iran war — at least 11 days since their last news conference on March 19.
Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon press secretary, said in an email that Hegseth had provided updates at several public events with President Trump this week. And Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, this week posted two short videotaped operational updates. But none of those events offered reporters an opportunity to question Hegseth or the admiral.
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