Iran's President vows strong response to Israeli strike
In a televised address to the nation, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian vowed a 'legitimate and powerful' response to the Israeli attack on Iran, warning that Israel 'will regret its foolish act.'
Pezeshkian asserted that Iran will overcome the crisis with dignity, saying, 'The country will emerge from this ordeal with its head held high.'
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Ya Libnan
an hour ago
- Ya Libnan
Strait of Hormuz: What happens if Iran shuts global oil corridor?
Map of Strait of Hormuz By : Gavin Butler There is considerable speculation that Iran might retaliate for the US's strikes on its nuclear facilities by closing the world's busiest oil shipping channel, the Strait of Hormuz. About 20% of global oil and gas flows through this narrow shipping lane in the Gulf. Blocking it would have profound consequences for the global economy, disrupting international trade and ratcheting up oil prices. It could also inflate the cost of goods and services worldwide, and hit some of the world's biggest economies, including China, India and Japan, which are among the top importers of crude oil passing through the strait. What is the Strait of Hormuz – and where is it? The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world's most important shipping routes, and its most vital oil transit choke point. Bounded to the north by Iran and to the south by Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the corridor – which is only about 50km wide at its entrance and exit, and about 33km wide at its narrowest point – connects the Gulf with the Arabian Sea. The strait is deep enough for the world's biggest crude oil tankers, and is used by the major oil and gas producers in the Middle East – and their customers. In the first half of 2023 around 20m barrels of oil went through the Strait of Hormuz per day, according to estimates from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) – that's nearly $600bn worth of energy trade per year. That oil comes not only from Iran, but also other Gulf states such as Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. What would be the impact of closing the strait? Former head of the UK's intelligence agency MI6, Sir Alex Younger, told the BBC his worst-case scenario in the ongoing Iran-Israel conflict included a blockade on the Hormuz Strait. 'Closing the strait would be obviously an incredible economic problem given the effect it would have on the oil price,' he said. It would be 'uncharted terrain', according to Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor at Kuwait University who specialises in geopolitics of the Arabian Peninsula. 'It would have direct consequences on world markets, because you're going to look at an uptick in the oil price, [and] you're going to see the stock markets reacting very nervously to what's happening,' Mr Al-Saif told BBC Newshour. It would, of course, hurt the Gulf countries whose economies rely heavily on energy exports. Saudi Arabia, for instance, uses the strait to export around 6m barrels of crude oil per day – more than any neighbouring country – according to research by analytics firm Vortexa. Iran, by comparison, exports about 1.7m barrels per day, according to the International Energy Agency. Iran exported $67bn worth of oil in the financial year ending March 2025 – its highest oil revenue in the past decade – according to estimates by the Central Bank of Iran. Asia too would be hit hard. In 2022, around 82% of crude oil and condensates (low-density liquid hydrocarbons that typically occur with natural gas) leaving the Strait of Hormuz were bound for Asian countries, according to EIA estimates. China alone is estimated to buy around 90% of the oil that Iran exports to the global market. Any disruptions to that could increase fuel and production costs at a time when China is having to rely on manufacturing and exports. That's not just a domestic problem, either: rising manufacturing costs could eventually be passed on to consumers, fuelling inflation around the world. The impact could also be outsized for other key Asian economies, which are among the biggest importers, after China. Nearly half India's crude oil and 60% of its natural gas imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz. South Korea reportedly gets 60% of its crude oil through the strait, and Japan nearly three-quarters. How could Iran close the strait? United Nations rules allow countries to exercise control up to 12 nautical miles (13.8 miles) from their coastline. This means that at its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz and its shipping lanes lie entirely within Iran and Oman's territorial waters. If Iran were to try and block the 3,000 or so ships that sail through the strait each month, one of the most effective ways to do it, according to experts, would be to lay mines using fast attack boats and submarines. Iran's regular navy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) navy could potentially launch attacks on foreign warships and commercial vessels. However, large military ships may in turn become easy targets for US air strikes. Iran's fast boats are often armed with anti-ship missiles, and the country also operates a range of surface vessels, semi-submersible craft and submarines. Experts say Iran could block the strait temporarily, but many are equally confident that the US and its allies could swiftly re-establish the flow of maritime traffic through military means. The US has done this before. In the late 1980s, during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, strikes on oil facilities escalated into a 'tanker war' that saw both countries attacking neutral ships to exert economic pressure. Kuwaiti tankers carrying Iraqi oil were especially vulnerable – and eventually, American warships began escorting them through the Gulf in what became the biggest naval convoy operation since World War II. Will Iran block the strait? While Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz in past conflicts, it has never followed through. Perhaps the closest call was during the tanker war of the late 1980s – but even then, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz was never seriously disrupted. If Iran delivers on its threat, this time could be different. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has claimed that Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz would amount to 'economic suicide', and called on China, an ally of Tehran, to intervene . 'I encourage the Chinese government in Beijing to call them [Iran] about that, because they heavily depend on the Strait of Hormuz for their oil,' Rubio said in an interview with Fox News on Sunday. 'We retain options to deal with that, but other countries should be looking at that as well. It would hurt other countries' economies a lot worse than ours.' Though China is yet to respond, Beijing is highly unlikely to welcome any rise in oil prices or disruptions to shipping routes, and could leverage its diplomatic weight to dissuade the Iranian government from going ahead with the blockade. Energy analyst Vandana Hari said Iran has 'little to gain and too much to lose' from closing the Strait. 'Iran risks turning its oil and gas producing neighbours in the Gulf into enemies and invoking the ire of its key market China by disrupting traffic in the Strait,' Hari told BBC News. Can alternative routes offset a blockade? The persistent threat of a closure of the Strait of Hormuz has, over the years, prompted oil-exporting countries in the Gulf region to develop alternative export routes. According to an EIA report, Saudi Arabia has activated its East–West pipeline, a 1,200km-long line capable of transporting up to 5m barrels of crude oil per day. In 2019, Saudi Arabia temporarily repurposed a natural gas pipeline to carry crude oil. The United Arab Emirates has connected its inland oilfields to the port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman via a pipeline with a daily capacity of 1.5m barrels. In July 2021, Iran inaugurated the Goreh–Jask pipeline, intended to move crude oil to the Gulf of Oman. This pipeline can currently carry around 350,000 barrels per day – although reports suggest Iran does not yet. The EIA estimates that these alternative routes could collectively handle around 3.5m barrels of oil per day – roughly 15% of the crude currently shipped through the strait. BBC
Nahar Net
2 hours ago
- Nahar Net
Hezbollah has stayed out of the Israel-Iran conflict but 'wild cards remain'
by Naharnet Newsdesk 23 June 2025, 12:53 Hezbollah has long been considered Iran's first line of defense in case of a war with Israel. But since Israel launched its massive barrage against Iran, triggering the ongoing Israel-Iran war, the Lebanese militant group has stayed out of the fray — even after the U.S. entered the conflict Sunday with strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. A network of powerful Iran-backed militias in Iraq has also remained mostly quiet. Domestic political concerns, as well as tough losses suffered in nearly two years of regional conflicts and upheavals, appear to have led these Iran allies to take a back seat in the latest round convulsing the region. "Despite all the restraining factors, wild cards remain," said Tamer Badawi, an associate fellow with the Germany-based think tank Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient. That's especially true after the U.S. stepped in with strikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran. The 'Axis of Resistance' Hezbollah was formed with Iranian support in the early 1980s as a guerilla force fighting against Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon at the time. The militant group helped push Israel out of Lebanon and built its arsenal over the ensuing decades, becoming a powerful regional force and the centerpiece of a cluster of Iranian-backed factions and governments known as the " Axis of Resistance." The allies also include Iraqi Shiite militias and Yemen's Houthi rebels, as well as the Palestinian militant group Hamas. At one point, Hezbollah was believed to have some 150,000 rockets and missiles, and the group's former leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah once boasted of having 100,000 fighters. Seeking to aid its ally Hamas in the aftermath of the Palestinian militants' Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel and Israel's offensive in Gaza, Hezbollah began launching rockets across the border. That drew Israeli airstrikes and shelling, and the exchanges escalated into full-scale war last September. Israel inflicted heavy damage on Hezbollah, killing Nasrallah and other top leaders and destroying much of its arsenal, before a U.S.-negotiated ceasefire halted that conflict last November. Israel continues to occupy parts of southern Lebanon and to carry out near-daily airstrikes. For their part, the Iraqi militias occasionally struck bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, while Yemen's Houthis fired at vessels in the Red Sea, a crucial global trade route, and began targeting Israel. Keeping an ambiguous stance Hezbollah has condemned Israel's attacks and the U.S. strikes on Iran. Just days before the U.S. attack, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said in a statement that the group "will act as we deem appropriate in the face of this brutal Israeli-American aggression." A statement issued by the group after the U.S. strikes called for "Arab and Islamic countries and the free peoples of the world" to stand with Iran but did not suggest Hezbollah would join in Tehran's retaliation. Lebanese government officials have pressed the group to stay out of the conflict, saying that Lebanon cannot handle another damaging war, and U.S. envoy Tom Barrack, who visited Lebanon last week, said it would be a "very bad decision" for Hezbollah to get involved. Iraq's Kataib Hezbollah militia — a separate group from Hezbollah — had said prior to the U.S. attack that it will directly target U.S. interests and bases spread throughout the region if Washington gets involved. The group has also remained silent since Sunday's strikes. The Houthis last month reached an agreement with Washington to stop attacks on U.S. vessels in the Red Sea in exchange for the U.S. halting its strikes on Yemen, but the group threatened to resume its attacks if Washington entered the Iran-Israel war. In a statement on Sunday, the Houthis' political bureau described the U.S. attack on Iran as a "grave escalation that poses a direct threat to regional and international security and peace." The Houthis did not immediately launch strikes. Reasons to stay on the sidelines Hezbollah was weakened by last year's fighting and after losing a major supply route for Iranian weapons with the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad, a key ally, in a lightning rebel offensive in December. "Hezbollah has been degraded on the strategic level while cut off from supply chains in Syria," said Andreas Krieg, a military analyst and associate professor at King's College London. Still, Qassem Qassir, a Lebanese analyst close to Hezbollah, said a role for the militant group in the Israel-Iran conflict should not be ruled out. "The battle is still in its early stages," he said. "Even Iran hasn't bombed American bases (in response to the U.S. strikes), but rather bombed Israel." He said that both the Houthis and the Iraqi militias "lack the strategic deep strike capability against Israel that Hezbollah once had." Renad Mansour, a senior research fellow at the Chatham House think tank in London, said Iraq's Iran-allied militias have all along tried to avoid pulling their country into a major conflict. Unlike Hezbollah, whose military wing has operated as a non-state actor in Lebanon — although its political wing is part of the government — the main Iraqi militias are members of a coalition of groups that are officially part of the state defense forces. "Things in Iraq are good for them right now, they're connected to the state — they're benefitting politically, economically," Mansour said. "And also they've seen what's happened to Iran, to Hezbollah and they're concerned that Israel will turn on them as well." Badawi said that for now, the armed groups may be lying low because "Iran likely wants these groups to stay intact and operational." "But if Iran suffers insurmountable losses or if the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) is assassinated, those could act as triggers," he said.
Nahar Net
2 hours ago
- Nahar Net
Israel attacks Iran's Fordo nuclear site
by Naharnet Newsdesk 23 June 2025, 12:28 Israel carried out a fresh strike on Iran's underground Fordo nuclear site south of Tehran, a media outlet in the country reported. "The aggressor attacked the Fordo nuclear site again," Tasnim news agency reported, quoting a spokesperson for the crisis management authority in Qom province where the site is located. Israel is carrying out unprecedented strikes on Iran's capital targeting "agencies of government repression", Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement on Monday. The Israeli military "is carrying out strikes of unprecedented force against regime targets and agencies of government oppression in the heart of Tehran", Katz said as the Iran-Israel war rages on.
