{"id":49653,"date":"2026-04-03T07:52:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T07:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/49653\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T07:52:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T07:52:12","slug":"iran-war-nears-fifth-week-with-both-sides-fighting-and-oil-prices-surging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/49653\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran war nears fifth week with both sides fighting and oil prices surging"},"content":{"rendered":"

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) \u2014 Iran fired on targets across the Middle East, sparking multiple blazes at a Kuwaiti oil refinery, while American and Israeli airstrikes hit the Islamic Republic on Friday as the war neared the end of its fifth week unabated and the U.N. Security Council<\/a> prepared to meet over Tehran\u2019s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

Despite claims from the U.S. and Israel that Iran\u2019s military capabilities<\/a> have been all but destroyed, Tehran has continued to keep the pressure on Israel and its Gulf Arab neighbors, hitting Kuwait\u2019s Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery early Friday in a drone attack.<\/p>\n

The refinery has been hit multiple times during the war and state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp. said firefighters were working to control several blazes. Sirens also sounded in Bahrain warning of Iranian attacks, Saudi Arabia said it had destroyed several Iranian drones, defenses were activated in the United Arab Emirates and Israel reported incoming missiles. <\/p>\n

Activists reported strikes around Tehran and the central city of Isfahan, but it wasn\u2019t immediately clear what was hit. <\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s attacks on Gulf region energy infrastructure and its tight grip on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world\u2019s oil and natural gas transits in peacetime, have sent oil prices skyrocketing and is impacting global economies. <\/p>\n

Spot prices of Brent crude<\/a>, the international standard, were around $109 early Friday, up more than 50% from Feb. 28 when Israel and the U.S. started the war with their attacks on Iran. <\/p>\n

UN Security Council to take up Strait of Hormuz security question<\/p>\n

Shipping had flowed freely through the strait before the war, but U.S. President Donald Trump has said it\u2019s not now Washington\u2019s responsibility to get the waterway reopened, instead putting the onus on others, saying this week that the countries that depend more on fuel shipped through Hormuz should \u201cbuild some delayed courage\u201d and go \u201ctake it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.N. Security Council was expected to vote Saturday on a proposal from Bahrain that would authorize defensive action to ensure vessels can safely transit the strait. Bahrain\u2019s initial draft would have allowed countries to \u201cuse all necessary means\u201d to secure the strait, but Russia, China and France \u2014 who have veto power on the Council \u2014 expressed opposition to approving the use of force. <\/p>\n

Following meetings in Seoul between South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and French President Emmanuel Macron<\/a>, the two leaders said they resolved to \u201ccooperate to ensure safe passage\u201d through the strait but did not offer specifics. The day before, Macron had said the American expectation that the waterway could be reopened by force was unrealistic.<\/p>\n

Macron said a military operation \u201cwould take an infinite amount of time and would expose anyone passing through the strait to coastal threats from (Iran\u2019s) Revolutionary Guard.\u201d He added that reopening of the strait \u201ccan only be done in coordination with Iran,\u201d through negotiations that would follow a potential ceasefire.<\/p>\n

Thousands of U.S. Marines and paratroopers have been ordered to the region and Trump could try a ground operation to take Iran\u2019s Kharg Island, its main oil terminal, or territory along the strait, but both carry significant risks, former CIA Director Bill Burns said on a Foreign Affairs magazine podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen there\u2019s the third option, which is effectively declaring victory and the inversion of the old Colin Powell Pottery Barn rule, which was \u2018We break it, we own it,\u2019\u201d Burns said, referencing a comment attributed to former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead, it would be, \u2018We break it, you own it, and it\u2019s over to you guys,\u2019 whether it\u2019s European allies or Gulf Arabs or anybody else to ensure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s former top diplomat suggests terms to end the war<\/p>\n

The U.S. has presented Iran with a 15-point plan for a ceasefire that includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz, but no signs of progress were apparent in the diplomatic effort, with Iran regularly noting the U.S. has attacked the nation the last two times it was in negotiations with the Trump administration, including to start this war. <\/p>\n

In a proposal published Friday in Foreign Affairs, Iran\u2019s former top diplomat Mohammad Javad Zarif suggested, however, that Iran should now \u201cuse its upper hand\u201d to make a ceasefire deal. <\/p>\n

Zarif, the former foreign minister who helped reach the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, wrote that Tehran \u201cshould offer to place limits on its nuclear program and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to all sanctions \u2014 a deal Washington wouldn\u2019t take before but might accept now.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Zarif has no official position now in Iran\u2019s theocracy, he helped get reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian elected. He also would not have been able to publish such a piece without at least running the positions past senior members of the country\u2019s theocracy.<\/p>\n

It is not clear how Trump would respond to such a pitch, particularly as Zarif referred to the envoys Trump sent previously to negotiate with Iran \u2014 close friend Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner \u2014 as \u201ccompletely illiterate on both geopolitics and nuclear technicalities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Death toll keeps rising<\/p>\n

More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran during the war, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel. More than two dozen people have died in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank, while 13 U.S. service members<\/a> have been killed.<\/p>\n

More than 1,300 people have been killed<\/a> and more than 1 million displaced in Lebanon, where Israel has launched a ground invasion in its fight with the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militant group. Ten Israeli soldiers have also died there.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Rising reported from Bangkok. AP journalists Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Tong-hyung Kim in Seoul, South Korea and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) \u2014 Iran fired on targets across the Middle East, sparking multiple blazes at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[20214,328,20213,38,1143,777,197,1829,34,61,196,37,199,2018,13177,3620,324,20212,463,2017,69,7633,200,771,82],"class_list":["post-49653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-bill-burns","tag-business","tag-colin-powell","tag-donald-trump","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-energy-industry","tag-general-news","tag-international-agreements","tag-iran","tag-iran-government","tag-iran-war","tag-israel","tag-israel-government","tag-jared-kushner","tag-lee-jae-myung","tag-masoud-pezeshkian","tag-mideast-wars","tag-mohammed-javad-zarif","tag-religion","tag-steve-witkoff","tag-tehran","tag-united-nations-security-council","tag-war-and-unrest","tag-washington-news","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116339693580823631","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}