Iran launched multiple attacks early Friday on Gulf Arab states, including dozens of drones at Saudi Arabia, following warnings from its new supreme leader about hosting American bases, and U.S. President Donald Trump threatened major new retaliation.
“Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “Iran’s Navy is gone, their Air Force is no longer, missiles, drones and everything else are being decimated, and their leaders have been wiped from the face of the earth.”
The comments came the day after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei vowed to “not refrain from avenging the blood” of Iranians killed, and warned Gulf Arab nations to shut U.S. bases, saying the notion of American protection was “nothing more than a lie.”
Intense airstrikes hit early Friday around Iran’s capital, Tehran, as well as outlying areas. It was not immediately clear what had been targeted.
The price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, remained stubbornly over $100 per barrel as Iran kept its stranglehold on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil transits on its way from the Persian Gulf to the open seas.
Brent prices have spiked as high as about $120 per barrel and are currently some 40% higher than when Israel and the United States attacked Iran on Feb. 28 to start the war.
Iran has been attacking ships that try to transit the strait, and Khamenei’s comments — his first to the public since being named to replace his father, who was killed during the first day of the conflict — said Iran would continue to block the waterway.
In Iraq, recovery efforts were underway after an American KC-135 refueling plane went down, according to U.S. Central Command. And a French soldier who was stationed in the north of the country was killed in an attack, the French president said Friday.
Iran launches new attacks on Gulf Arab countries
Iran has been attacking oil and other infrastructure around the Gulf region, and on Friday Saudi Arabia that it had downed nearly 50 drones sent in multiple waves throughout the early morning hours.
Sirens also sounded in Bahrain warning of incoming fire from Dubai, and black smoke billowed from an industrial area after authorities said debris from an interception had sparked a blaze.
Nearly 60 people were wounded in northern Israel after Hezbollah said it had fired several rocket salvoes toward the area and at Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. Almost all the injuries were described as very minor.
One person was killed in southwestern Beirut in an Israeli strike, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, and another attack hit an apartment in the capital, leaving it engulfed in flames. Following the attacks, the Israeli army said it had been targeting a member of Iran-linked Hezbollah.
More than 600 people have been killed in Lebanon since the fighting began, the Health Ministry has reported. and nearly 800,000 have been internally displaced, according to the U.N. refugee agency.
