Iran, on Friday, hitting targets across the Middle East, destroyed a desalination plant and set a refinery ablaze in Kuwait. At the same time, the American and Israeli airstrikes hit the Islamic Republic. The US-Israel-Iran war nears the end of its fifth week.
Tehran has kept the pressure on Israel and its Gulf Arab neighbour, despite US and Israeli insistence that Iran's military capabilities have been all but destroyed. Iran's attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure and its tight grip on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas transits in peacetime, have roiled stock markets, sent oil prices skyrocketing, and threatened to raise the cost of many basic goods, including food.
Iran's ability to wreak havoc in the global economy has proved a major strategic advantage, and world leaders have struggled to figure out how to reopen the waterway. The UN Security Council was expected to look at a new proposal.
Kuwait's Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery came under Iranian attack. The facility 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, Saudi Arabia said it had destroyed several Iranian drones, and Israel reported incoming missiles. Authorities in the United Arab Emirates shut down a gas field after a missile interception reportedly rained debris on it and started a fire.
Activists reported strikes around Tehran and the central city of Isfahan, but it wasn't immediately clear what was hit. A day earlier, Iran said the US hit a major bridge, which was still under construction, killing eight people.
With the Strait of Hormuz closed, spot prices of Brent crude, the international standard, were around USD 109 early Friday, up more than 50 per cent since the start of the war, when Iran began restricting traffic through it. The UN Security Council is expected to vote on Saturday on a proposal from Bahrain that would authorise defensive action to ensure vessels can safely transit the waterway.
More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran during the war, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel. Over two dozen people have died in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank, while 13 US service members have been killed.
More than 1,300 people have been killed 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.
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