Trump warns of more strikes on Iran's Kharg Island, pressures allies to secure oil chokepoint

DUBAI: US President Donald Trump threatened more strikes on Iran's main oil export hub Kharg Island and said he was not ready for a deal with Tehran to end the war, which has shut off the vital Strait of Hormuz and caused chaos in global energy markets.

With the US-Israeli war on Iran in its third week, Trump said US strikes had "totally demolished" much of the island and warned of more, telling NBC News on Saturday (Mar 14), "We may hit it a few more times just for fun."

The remarks marked a sharp escalation from Trump, who had previously said the US was targeting only military sites on Kharg, and dealt a blow to diplomatic efforts to end a war that has spread across the Middle East and killed more than 2,000 people, most in Iran and Lebanon.

Trump called on countries that have been impacted by the choking off of oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz to join efforts to reopen shipping lanes. The Financial Times reported that European Union foreign ministers would discuss widening the EU's regional Aspides naval mission.

Washington has brushed aside attempts by Middle Eastern allies to open talks, three sources told Reuters, and Iran's Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday they had fired more missiles at Israel and three US bases in the region.

Trump, who has made a series of varying demands, including a say in choosing Iran's leader and an end to its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, told NBC News that Tehran appeared ready to make a deal to end the fighting but that "the terms aren't good enough yet".

In his interview with NBC, Trump raised the possibility that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei may have been killed, but Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Khamenei was in full health and managing the situation.

WAR, ENERGY CRISIS LOOK SET TO PERSIST

As missile and drone exchanges continued on Sunday and shipping remained blocked, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said he expected the war to end within "the next few weeks", bringing a swift rebound in supplies and lower prices.

But with global air transport heavily disrupted and no clear end in sight, Iran's ability to choke off traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas, has emerged with increasing urgency as a decisive threat to the global economy.

Although some Iranian vessels have continued to pass, the passage has been effectively closed for most of the world's shipping since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb 28 at the start of an intensive bombing campaign that has hit thousands of targets across the country.

Khamenei, who succeeded as supreme leader after his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of the attacks, has said the Strait of Hormuz should remain closed.

The International Energy Agency said last week the closure of the narrow passage along Iran's southern coast had triggered the largest disruption to global oil markets in history, and was expected to cut around 8 per cent of global supplies in March.

Underlining the impact the war has had on energy infrastructure in the region, the global ship-refueling hub of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates was closed after barrages on Saturday but resumed oil-loading operations on Sunday, a Fujairah-based industry source said.

With crude oil prices above US$100 a barrel and expected to rise further next week, the issue has hung over Trump's Republican Party, which faces a major test at midterm elections in November.

Trump himself has dismissed worries about spiking prices for American consumers, saying they will fall back quickly. But he has called on China, France, Japan, South Korea, Britain and others to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz to ensure shipping can pass.

"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 US will also coordinate with those Countries so that everything goes quickly, smoothly, and well."

The FT said EU foreign affairs ministers holding a regular meeting on Monday would discuss potentially widening the EU Aspides naval mission that protects shipping against Houthi attacks in the Red Sea to include the Strait of Hormuz.

France has been seeking to assemble a coalition to secure the strait once the security situation stabilises, while Britain is discussing a range of options with allies to ensure the security of shipping, officials have said.

Araqchi told his French counterpart that countries must refrain from anything that could escalate the conflict. He also said Iran would respond to any attack on its energy facilities.

ISRAEL DENIES TALKS WITH LEBANON

Araqchi denied Iran was targeting civilian or residential areas in the Middle East and said it was ready to form a committee with its neighbours to investigate the responsibility for such strikes. 

Gulf countries have suffered damage to energy facilities and residential areas during the two-week war.

But as the standoff continued, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said it had fired more missile and drone barrages at targets in Israel and at US military bases in the region, where Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted 10 attacks.

Israel said its jets hit more targets in western Iran, including the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards and Basij militia forces in the city of Hamadan. 

A source briefed on Israel’s military strategy told Reuters that Israel had begun targeting roadblocks and bridges it believed Revolutionary Guards commanders were using. 

Iranian security forces detained dozens of people accused of sharing information with Israel, Iranian media reported. 

Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar rejected claims that Israel had told the United States it was running low on interceptors and dismissed a report that it could soon hold direct talks with Lebanon, where it has resumed its campaign against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement.

In Iran, at least 15 people 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. The Revolutionary Guards promised further retaliation for workers killed in Iran's industrial areas.

The war that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched on Feb 28 has killed more than 2,000 people, mostly in Iran, according to reports from governments and state media. 

Iran called on civilians in the UAE to evacuate ports, docks and "American hideouts", saying US forces had targeted Iran from those areas. The UAE denied that strikes on Iran's Kharg Island overnight on Friday had come from its territory.

Calling any facility associated with the United States a "legitimate target", Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps urged all US industries to move out of the region.

NO IMMEDIATE TAKERS ON TRUMP'S HORMUZ REQUEST

Russia is supplying Iran with Shahed drones to use against the US and Israel, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told CNN. Shahed drones have been linked to other attacks on countries in the region, although their manufacturers are not always clear.

Trump was spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he kept a relatively low public profile on Saturday, aside from his NBC interview and several posts on his Truth Social account.

In one such post, Trump urged China, France, Japan, South Korea, Britain and others to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz. None of those countries gave any immediate indication they would do so.

Takayuki Kobayashi, Japan's ruling party policy chief, declined to rule out the possibility, but told public broadcaster NHK that "the (legal) threshold is very high".

Japan interprets its pacifist postwar constitution to mean it can deploy its military if the nation's survival is threatened, but the government would have to invoke a 2015 security law that has not been used.

South Korea's presidential office said it would decide on Trump's request after a "careful review".

KHARG ISLAND DAMAGE

Iran played down the extent of the damage on Kharg Island. The US said it had targeted military, not energy industry, targets on the island, which is about 24km off Iran's coastline in the Gulf.

US Central Command said it hit more than 90 sites on Kharg, including naval mine storage facilities, ‌missile ⁠storage bunkers and other military targets.

Araqchi said Iran would respond to any attack on its energy facilities. Iran's Ministry of Defence said on Saturday that nine ballistic missiles and 33 drones were launched from Iran towards the UAE.

Iran warned residents to leave areas near Jebel Ali port in Dubai, Khalifa port in Abu Dhabi and the UAE's Fujairah port and said it was targeting branches of US banks in the Gulf.

Fujairah, outside the Strait of Hormuz, is the outlet for about 1 million barrels per day of the UAE's Murban crude oil - a volume equal to about 1 per cent of world demand.