Israel launches extensive strikes on Tehran as conflict escalates into its second week

Smoke and fire rise from the site of airstrikes at Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran on March 7. Israel announced a new wave of “broad-scale” strikes on Tehran on Saturday as the escalating war in the Middle East entered its second week and oil prices surged on fears about global supply disruption. The US-Israeli bombing campaign unleashed on February 28 has provoked Iranian retaliation against US allies across the region, with President Donald Trump saying Friday that only “unconditional” Iranian surrender would end the war.

But early on Saturday, air raid alerts and explosions were ringing out above Jerusalem as well as Gulf cities Dubai, Manama and near Riyadh — where Saudi Arabia intercepted a ballistic missile fired at an air base housing US military personnel. Iran’s army said on Saturday that its navy had launched a wave of drone attacks targeting Israel as well as US bases in the UAE and Kuwait, as the regional war raged into its second week. It said the targets included the UAE’s Al Minhad base and another in Kuwait, as well as a “strategic facility” in Israel.

Meanwhile, Israel’s military announced “a broad-scale wave of strikes” on government sites in the Iranian capital, and AFP photos showed fire and smoke billowing from Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport after it was hit. The week of widening conflict has hit Lebanon, Cyprus in the EU, Turkey and Azebaijan — and reached as far as Sri Lanka, where US forces fired a deadly torpedo strike that sank an Iranian warship. In addition to killing hundreds of people and causing significant damage to homes as well as infrastructure, the war has inflicted economic chaos.

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Crude oil prices surged on mounting fears about global supply disruption as the war and Tehran’s pressure on the Strait of Hormuz upend the world’s energy and transport sectors. The critical energy waterway is where tankers typically move nearly 20 percent of the world’s crude oil and about 20 percent of liquefied natural gas from the Gulf. The main US contract, West Texas Intermediate, soared more than 12 percent to over $90 per barrel, topping off the biggest weekly gain on record.

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