Oil prices rise as Trump says Iran war to last 2-3 more weeks, without Strait of Hormuz plan

China said on Thursday that ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iran were the “cause” of the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, after President Trump called on affected countries to seize the vital shipping lane and blamed Iran for its closure.

“The cause of the disruption of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz is the United States and Israel’s illegal military operations against Iran,” Beijing Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning told a news conference, when asked about Mr.

The American president said on Wednesday night that countries that get oil in this way “must take care of that place,” urging them to “just take it, protect it, use it for themselves.”

Iran, with constant missile and drone attacks across the Persian Gulf in retaliation for the war between the US and Israel that began on Feb. 28, has crippled the flow of maritime commerce through the strait, which connects the oil-exporting countries of the Gulf and the Arabian Sea and the lucrative Asian energy markets beyond.

Tehran says the strait is open to ships not affiliated with the US or Israel, but it is he started charging a steep fee to ships to pass, and a recent analysis shows Most of the tankers that have passed through the waterway in the past month are Iranian or Iranian-linked.

CBS/AFP

The price of oil increased significantly following the words of Mr. Trump on Wednesday evening. Brent crude, the international standard, jumped 6.9% to $108.15 a barrel before Thursday’s session.

Benchmark US crude rose 6.4% to $106.55 a barrel.

Although renewed hope earlier on Wednesday that the war in Iran may be over, global stocks rose, after Mr. Trump’s Wednesday night, Asian markets fell sharply on Thursday and American futures.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell 2.4% to 52,463.27. South Korea’s Kospi fell 4.5% to 5,234.05. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.3% to 24,965.07, while the Shanghai Composite index fell 0.9% to 3,913.88. Taiwan’s Taiex was trading 1.8% lower, while India’s Sensex fell 1.9%.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 1.1% to 8,579.50.

US futures were down more than 1.2% in pre-trade on Thursday.

“The market showed disappointment because President Trump’s speech was less than the market expected,” said Takashi Hiroki, chief strategist at Monex in Tokyo. “There was no concrete information about the end of the conflict with Iran.”

“What the market wants is a clear framework regarding the ceasefire,” he said.

CBS/AP

A few hours before Mr. After Trump delivered his speech on Wednesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian posted an open letter in English on his X account appealing directly to the American people and stressing that his country had tried to negotiate before the US stopped negotiations and launched an ongoing war.

“Attacks on Iran’s critical infrastructure – including energy and industry – directly target the Iranian people,” Pezeshkian said. “Apart from war crimes, such actions have consequences that go far beyond Iran’s borders.”

They sowed “instability, increased human and economic costs,” and planted “seeds of resentment that will last for years,” he continued.

“What exactly are the interests of the American people served by this war?”

Casting the conflict as costly for both sides, Pezeshkian asked if there had been a “threat from Iran to justify such behavior,” as Israel and the Trump administration have insisted, and asked if Washington entered the war “as a proxy for Israel, influenced and used by that regime.”

“Is ‘America First’ among the priorities of the US government today?” Pezeshkian asked.

In comments that went back and forth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on March 2, three days into the war, that the Trump administration “knew there was going to be an Israeli action. [Iranian] to attack the American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t go after them before they started that attack, we would suffer a lot and maybe more. [number of] those who were killed, then we will all be here answering questions about why we knew that and did nothing.”

CBS/AFP

At least two people were wounded Thursday as Iran and its regional militia fired another wave of missiles into northern Israel, medics said.

A spokesman for the national rescue center Magen David Adom said paramedics were providing treatment and transported to a local hospital two men with very minor injuries in the north of the country, not far from the Lebanese border, where Iran-backed Hezbollah has launched repeated rocket attacks.

Saudi Arabia’s Defense Ministry said the kingdom’s warplanes intercepted at least four Iranian drones Thursday morning, as Iran continued its attacks on Israel and America’s Persian Gulf allies after President Trump repeated his assertion that the Islamic Republic had been “destroyed.”

Iran’s joint military command dismissed President Trump’s assessment of the Islamic Republic’s remaining power as “incomplete,” vowing Thursday to continue fighting the US and Israel to “permanent remorse and surrender.”

A spokesman for Iran’s central military headquarters Khatam al-Anbiya was quoted by Iran’s Tasnim news agency as saying the regime would launch a “brutal, wide-ranging and destructive” attack.

Spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaqari’s comments echoed President Trump’s remarks in his speech on Wednesday night, where the US leader vowed that Iran would be hit “very hard” in the coming weeks, but insisted that its military capabilities were “complete” and the US was on track to achieve its military objectives.

In a post on the Telegram messaging app, Zolfaqari reiterated his claim that “the US’s knowledge about our military capabilities, capabilities, and equipment is incomplete,” adding a warning that “we should not be under the illusion that you have destroyed our missile production facilities, long-range attack drones, modern air defense and electronic warfare systems, and special equipment, and special equipment. You hold yourselves.”

The US ambassador to Baghdad warned on Thursday that pro-Iranian armed groups in Iraq may attack the city in the next day or two.

“Iraqi terrorist groups allied with Iran may aim to attack central Baghdad in the next 24-48 hours,” the embassy said in a statement posted on social media, also urging Americans in the country to leave immediately.

This warning came out two days after the American journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped in broad daylight in the capital of Iraq. Two sources familiar with the matter confirmed his capture to CBS News, along with an Iraqi official.

Alex Plitsas, Kittleson’s US liaison and national security analyst for CNN, said Kittleson was abducted after being alerted by the US government about a threat against him by the Iranian militant group Kata’ib Hezbollah, which allegedly wanted to kidnap or kill female journalists.

Dylan Johnson, assistant secretary of state for international affairs, confirmed to The X-Post that the suspect arrested by Iraqi authorities in connection with Kittleson’s kidnapping had ties to Kata’ib Hezbollah.

President Trump said in a speech Wednesday night that the U.S. will achieve its war goals in Iran “soon,” adding that the U.S. military has achieved a “major victory,” but did not provide a clear timeline as questions swirled about when and how the war might end.

The president, in his nearly 19-minute speech from the White House, said the US would hit Iran “hard” in the next two to three weeks. He renewed his threat destroying Iran’s power plants and targeting oil infrastructure if the country’s leaders do not make an agreement to end the war.

“I made it clear from the beginning of Operation Epic Fury that we will continue until our goals are fully achieved,” said the president. “Because of the progress we’ve made, I can say tonight that we’re on the way to eliminating every American military objective very, very soon. We’re going to hit them hard in the next two to three weeks. We’re going to put them back in the stone age, where they belong.”

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