Iran Will Not Submit to ‘Lawless Aggression’ Saudi Arabia’s Source Ratchets NYT Report of Encouraging Protracted War.
DUBAI/ GENEVA/ TEHRAN/ WASHINGTON:
President Donald Trump on Monday demanded that US allies join an effort to secure the Strait of Hormuz, as European powers ruled out a NATO mission to reopen the vital waterway that was closed by Iran during the Middle East war.
Trump criticized the lukewarm response to his call for world powers to send warships to escort tankers through the strait, which normally carries a fifth of global crude, and demanded a more enthusiastic response.
Trump said he believed Britain and France would get involved — but only reluctantly.
“We strongly encourage the other nations to engage with us and get involved quickly and with great enthusiasm,” Trump told reporters at a White House event.
“The level of enthusiasm matters to me.”
NATO allies and other Western nations earlier backed down on Trump’s weekend call for military hardware.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said London was working with allies to draw up a “viable” plan to reopen the strait but ruled out a NATO mission, while Berlin also said it “has been clear at all times that this war is not a matter for NATO”.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that “the question of how Germany can contribute militarily does not arise. We will not do that.”
Japan, Australia, Poland, Spain, Greece and Sweden also all distanced themselves from any military involvement in the Strait of Hormuz.
EU foreign ministers discussed the war in Brussels on Monday but showed “no appetite” to expand their Red Sea naval mission to help reopen Hormuz, the bloc’s top diplomat said.
Trump told the Financial Times on Sunday that it would be “very bad for the future of NATO” if they refused to help, and he has threatened to postpone a planned summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Explosions hit the Iranian capital on Monday as air defense systems were activated, an AFP journalist said, and Israel said it had also targeted the cities of Shiraz and Tabriz, but Tehran’s foreign minister struck a defiant tone.
“Now they have… understood what kind of nation they are dealing with, one that does not hesitate to defend itself and is ready to continue the war wherever it may lead and take it as far as necessary,” Abbas Araghchi told reporters in Tehran.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard threatened to attack US companies in the region and warned employees to evacuate after Iran’s foreign minister issued a defiant warning to Washington.
A drone sparked a fuel tank fire near Dubai airport, disrupting travel, while a missile killed a civilian in their car in Abu Dhabi, and another drone sparked a fire in an area housing oil infrastructure in the eastern emirate of Fujairah.
“It has been a difficult few weeks hearing explosions regularly, but the Iranian attacks followed me in my last hours before I could fly home,” a witness at Dubai airport told AFP.
The United Arab Emirates’ state-owned energy giant ADNOC halted the loading of oil into storage tanks in Fujairah, but oil prices retreated as the International Energy Agency said more strategic oil stocks could be released.
Saudi, UAE calls
The war has engulfed much of the region, with Iran hitting at least 10 countries that host US forces. Its Revolutionary Guard says it has fired about 700 missiles and 3,600 drones.
Saudi Arabia intercepted more than 60 drones overnight, its defense ministry said on Monday, and Iraqi authorities said rockets wounded five people the day before at Baghdad airport, which houses a US diplomatic facility.
Despite the violence and a 17-day internet blackout, some Iranians have tried to restore a sense of normalcy, with cafes and restaurants reopening and the popular Tajrish bazaar bustling over the weekend ahead of the upcoming Persian New Year.
There are few signs of a popular uprising in Iran, where security forces killed thousands during protests in January.
Chief Justice Gholam Hossein Mohseni said there must be no leniency in issuing “final sentences” against the regime’s opponents during the war.
More than 1,200 Iranians have been killed by US and Israeli strikes, according to the latest figures from Iran’s health ministry on March 8, which could not be independently verified.
The UN refugee agency says up to 3.2 million people have been displaced in Iran.
United Nations
Iran vowed at the United Nations on Monday that it would not submit to “lawless aggression” and said 90 million citizens were in “serious danger” from US and Israeli attacks.
At the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, where countries discussed the rights situation in Iran, UN experts highlighted Tehran’s deadly crackdown on protesters in recent months and warned that the crackdown was likely to worsen amid the Middle East war.
Iran’s ambassador Ali Bahreini hit back, insisting that the focus should instead be on the aggression against his country, “carried out by some of the most lawless and unscrupulous actors on the international stage”.
“The most pressing and fundamental human rights issue concerning Iran is the imminent threat to the lives of 90 million people whose lives are in immediate and grave danger under the shadow of wanton military aggression,” he told the council.
Bahreini said that if such “ruthless militarism” was met with indifference, “Iran will certainly not be the last country to suffer such treatment”.
NEW report
A Saudi source on Monday dismissed an alleged report by The New York Times about the kingdom’s leadership encouraging the United States for a protracted protracted war with Iran, Al Arabiya reported.
The NYT claimed in a report a day ago that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman advised US President Donald Trump to “keep hitting the Iranians hard”.
However, Al Arabiya reported that a “Saudi source” told the broadcast today that the NYT report was “false.”
UAE output
The United Arab Emirates’ daily oil output has fallen by more than half as the Iran conflict and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz forced state oil giant ADNOC to implement widespread production shutdowns, two sources told Reuters.
