Israel and Iran trade strikes, threatening to drag region back to full-scale war

Tehran warned of retaliation on Sunday after Israel struck Beirut’s southern suburbs without warning in defiance of Washington’s request days ago to stand down.

Monday marked the 100th day of the Iran war, launched Feb. 28 when Israel and the United States killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian leaders.

The war raged until the two sides reached a ceasefire on April 8, but efforts at a permanent end to the hostilities have been challenged by Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas once passed in peacetime, as well as fighting between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.

With global energy supplies threatened, Iran still holding a vast stockpile of highly enriched uranium and Yemen’s Houthi rebels getting involved in the fighting Monday, the risk of the war fully erupting again appears to be rising.

Diplomats race to save ceasefire

Two regional officials said concerted diplomatic efforts were underway Monday to salvage the ceasefire between Iran and the United States after the exchange of strikes between Israel and Iran.

Officials from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan and Qatar, have urged the U.S. administration to pressure Israel to rein in its strikes on Iran and Beirut. They have also urged Iranian officials to stop attacks on Israel, they said. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.

One of the officials, who is involved in mediation efforts between Iran and the U.S., said the Pakistan-led mediators were furious about the Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, which came while Pakistan’s interior minister was in Tehran in a fresh bid to push U.S.-Iranian negotiations forward.

The mediators told the U.S. administration that the Israeli strike on Beirut meant “to disrupt our efforts to reach a deal” and that “Trump has to stop Netanyahu’s reckless maneuvers.”

Trump says ‘I call the shots,’ not Israel

The White House did not respond to messages about the Israeli strikes and whether they were done in coordination with the U.S.

A senior U.S. official on Sunday said U.S. President Donald Trump had called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to urge him not to retaliate immediately for the Iranian missile attack. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private phone call, said that Trump believed he had convinced Netanyahu to wait.

Trump “got Bibi to hold off for the time being,” the official said. The official would not offer any other details of the call, and there was no immediate comment from Netanyahu’s office.

Trump earlier told a Fox News Channel reporter that he wanted the Iranians to stop firing missiles and return to the negotiating table. He also said that Israel’s strikes in Lebanon earlier Sunday were not coordinated with the U.S. and “I’m not happy about it.”

Speaking to The Financial Times before the Israeli strikes on Iran, Trump insisted he dictated terms to Netanyahu on how the war should be prosecuted.

“He won’t have any choice,” Trump told the newspaper in a telephone interview. “I call the shots. I call all the shots. He (Netanyahu) doesn’t call the shots.”

Houthis claim attack on Israel

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed an attack on Israel and said Israel-affiliated vessels would again be a target in the Red Sea, putting the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait connected them in danger.

The statement from Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree was broadcast on the Houthis’ al-Masirah satellite news channel. During the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, the Houthis killed at least nine mariners and sunk four ships in over 100 attacks, often targeting vessels with tangential or no ties at all to Israel.

The assaults upended shipping in the Red Sea, through which about $1 trillion of goods passed each year before the war.

They also greatly disrupted transits through Egypt’s Suez Canal, which links the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. The canal remains one of the top providers of hard currency for Egypt, providing it $10 billion in 2023 as its wider economy struggles.

The Houthis’ renewed threat also comes as Saudi Arabia is relying on its East-West Pipeline to export oil out through the Red Sea as an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

Israel strikes Iran

Iranian state television reported the sound of explosions being heard in Isfahan, Karaj, Tabriz and Tehran, without immediately elaborating. A witness in Tehran described hearing at least one large blast somewhere to the west of the country’s capital city. Iran closed the airspace around Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, the country’s main airfield, after the Israeli attack.

Officials offered no details on what had been struck, nor any damage information. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said that Israel used air-launched ballistic missiles in its attack Monday morning, without elaborating.

The semiofficial Fars and Mehr news agencies said Israeli strikes had hit a petrochemical factory in city of Mahshahr in Khuzestan province. It did not elaborate on damage.

The Israeli military later confirmed the strike on the petrochemical plant.

In Saudi Arabia, missile alert sirens sounded Monday morning in an area home to an air base that hosts U.S. forces. Saudi state media reported the alert around its Al Kharj governorate, home to Prince Sultan Air Base. The alert came after Israel’s strikes on Iran. Saudi Arabia shortly after said the missile danger in the area had passed, without elaborating.

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Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington; Michelle L. Price in Bridgewater, New Jersey; Elena Becatoros in Athens, Greece; and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.

Jon Gambrell, The Associated Press

by The Canadian Press

Israel and Iran trade strikes, threatening to drag region back to full-scale war

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