Iran threatened escalation across the Middle East to retaliate for American airstrikes on its energy hub and U.S. President Donald Trump urged friendly nations to send warships to secure the Strait of Hormuz, with no sign on Sunday of an end to the war.
Tehran’s ability to stop shipping through the strait, a major channel for oil and gas shipping, poses a difficult problem for the U.S. and its allies facing soaring energy prices as the war causes the biggest-ever disruption in oil supply.
“The Countries of the World that receive Oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage, and we will help — A LOT!” Trump wrote in a social media post on Saturday. “The U.S. will also coordinate with those Countries so that everything goes quickly, smoothly, and well.”
As the conflict stretched into its third week, both sides appeared to be digging in for an extended conflict. Three sources familiar with the efforts told Reuters that Trump’s administration had rebuffed efforts by Middle Eastern allies to start diplomatic negotiations aimed at ending the war.
Iran also projected defiance, rejecting the possibility of any ceasefire until U.S. and Israeli airstrikes end.
Iranian forces have kept up their strikes. A drone attack disrupted a major United Arab Emirates energy hub on Saturday and the U.S. warned U.S. citizens on Saturday to leave Iraq after a missile attack on the embassy in Baghdad overnight Friday.
Since Israel and the United States began air attacks on Iran on February 28, the war has killed more than 2,000 people, mostly in Iran, according to reports from governments and state media. At least 15 were killed when an airstrike hit a refrigerator and heater factory in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, the semi-official Fars news agency said on Saturday.
Iran called on civilians in the UAE to evacuate ports, docks and “American hideouts,” saying U.S. forces had targeted Iran from those areas. The UAE denied that the strikes on Iran’s Kharg island overnight Friday had come via its territory.
Calling any facility associated with the United States a “legitimate target,” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps urged all U.S. industries to move out of the region.-Reuters
