Updated ,first published
Washington: US President Donald Trump has warned he’s considering a “massive attack” on Iran to force the regime to negotiate a peace deal, as oil surged above $US100 a barrel after Iranian-backed militants fired at Saudi tankers in the Red Sea.
Trump told US news site Axios he was “close to making a decision” on combat operations that would be “bigger than ever before”. The president stressed he was yet to make up his mind but said the military was prepared to execute.
Iran was not ready to make a deal and “they haven’t received enough pain yet”, he was reported as saying.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that the US was beefing up troops, medics and weaponry in the Middle East to give Trump greater military options as he considered expanding the conflict, citing flight-tracking data and US officials.
The president’s remarks came as the price of Brent crude jumped more than 8 per cent to trade above $US100 a barrel for the first time since May amid widespread fears that Houthi attacks in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait would disrupt shipping in another crucial waterway.
Trump warned in a Truth Social post that if the Iran-backed militants in Yemen fired on another ship, he would inflict “major military punishment” on Iran and the Houthis themselves – “who I am very disappointed with in that they have, until now, acted very professionally and smart”.
Two weeks since the effective collapse of an interim truce meant to end the war, the US launched its 13th consecutive night of strikes against Iran “to further diminish the threat Iran poses to civilian mariners and commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz”.
A short time later, Iranian state media reported explosions along the Strait of Hormuz in Qeshm and Bandar Abbas, where two people were reportedly injured, as well as to the north-west near Andimeshk, Omidiyeh and Firuzabad.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres this week warned the Middle East was “teetering on the edge of the unimaginable”.
“The region is being pulled into an ever-widening circle of confrontation. One crisis feeds another. One escalation triggers the next,” he told a Security Council meeting.
The Australian government on Friday night raised the travel advice for Bahrain and Kuwait to Level 4 “do not travel” due to the deteriorating security situation across the Middle East, bringing them into line with Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen.
“The situation in the Middle East remains unpredictable. Military strikes are intensifying in a number of locations in the region. There is a risk of further escalation,” said a joint statement from Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Matt Thistlethwaite.
“Australians in ‘do not travel’ countries should consider leaving if safe to do so and while commercial flights remain available.”
Travel advice for the remaining countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Jordan, is at Level 3 “reconsider your need to travel”.
Earlier, Iranian parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf seized on the rapidly rising oil price to declare victory. “They wanted to punish Iran. Punished themselves with triple-digit oil instead,” he wrote on X.
Gregory Brew, an Iran and oil analyst at the Eurasia Group consultancy, said some cargo vessels in the Red Sea were turning around and heading north. At least one large tanker offloaded some of its load to cross the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sea.
It was “a reminder that the Houthis can ‘disrupt’ crude flows, but they can’t stop them, Hormuz-style, from reaching their destination”, Brew said on X.
Meanwhile, the US House of Representatives again passed a resolution calling on the president to stop the war against Iran unless it was specifically authorised by Congress, after four Republicans crossed the floor. The resolution carries no practical effect, and it stalled in the Senate.
Democrats used the rising price of oil to sharpen their attacks on Trump ahead of the summer congressional recess.
“The American people are against this war,” said Chuck Schumer, leader of the Democrats in the Senate, adding that it had “no direction or purpose”.
“They’re definitely against paying over four bucks for a gallon of gas.”
Speaking at an event spruiking data centres, Trump defended the ongoing war, noting it was far shorter and less deadly than US campaigns in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
“We want to get it over with, and we want to do it right, but we have to do what we came to do,” he said.
Trump also attempted to impose a caveat on a deal signed with Saudi Arabia on Wednesday that provides US companies access to the kingdom’s civilian nuclear energy program – a controversial move worth billions of dollars for those American firms.
In a Truth Social post, the president said the deal was conditional on Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, an initiative from Trump’s first term by which Arab nations normalise their relations with Israel.
Riyadh has long insisted that it must see meaningful progress towards a two-state solution for Palestine before it would consider joining the Accords.
The deal announced on Wednesday made no mention of Saudi Arabian policy on Israel changing, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt provided no further information at a briefing.
“If they don’t join the Abraham Accords, the deal is off,” she said of Trump’s position. “This agreement is still being worked out. It will eventually hopefully be finalised … with the condition that the president spoke about this morning.”
With Bloomberg, Reuters
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.From our partners
Trump warns of ‘massive attack’ on Iran, Australians urged to rethink travel plans
