Donald Trump has said he is close to deciding whether to launch \u201ca massive attack\u201d against Iran, on a scale larger than strikes already witnessed during the months-long conflict with Tehran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking to the Axios news site, the US president said: \u201cI am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before. I am close to making a decision. We are all set for it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump made his remarks on Thursday as\u00a0oil prices once again surged past the symbolic $100\u00a0for a barrel of Brent crude, the international benchmark, and amid indications the price could go higher still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He acknowledged that such a decision would have consequences but said he had not yet made a final determination. Israel \u201cwould join in two minutes if I ask them to\u201d, he added, before saying: \u201cWe don\u2019t need anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hours later the US carried out a 13th consecutive night of strikes on\u00a0Iran\u00a0lasting more \u2060than two \u200bhours. Iranian state media reported explosions along the strait of Hormuz in Qeshm and Bandar Abbas, as well as to the north-west of the country and in Tehran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The strikes however appeared to broadly match the scope and intensity of those the US has carried throughout the most recent escalation of violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump\u2019s comments on Thursday followed the earlier threat of \u201cmajor military punishment\u201d against Iran and the Houthis, after the Iran-backed\u00a0Yemeni militia\u2019s attacks on two Saudi Arabian oil tankers\u00a0in the Red Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Underlining the sense of a region increasingly approaching an abyss, the UN secretary general, Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, told the security council that the Middle East was being pushed to the \u201cedge of the unimaginable\u201d amid mounting fears over the trajectory of the conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe situation is getting out of control. It is 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,\u201d Guterres told a security council meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs this dynamic spreads, the political objectives are becoming increasingly obscured by the confrontation itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The UK announced it was temporarily\u00a0withdrawing diplomatic staff from Iran\u00a0on Wednesday, and the German military announced on Thursday that it would withdraw two vessels from the Red Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And as Israeli cities opened bomb shelters, the US state department warned Americans living in the region that flights may be cancelled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a separate development, Trump clarified on Thursday that an announced agreement that\u00a0the US would help Saudi Arabia with its civilian nuclear programme\u00a0would require the kingdom to normalise relations with Israel through the Abraham Accords, a move Saudi Arabia has long resisted until there is demonstrable movement on Palestinian rights and statehood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It emerged later that Trump had not spoken to\u00a0Saudi Arabia\u00a0about the new condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Houthi attacks threatened the safety of a second major maritime route connecting the Suez canal to the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. They also came amid reports that Iran had sent military advisers and drone parts to the\u00a0Houthis\u00a010 days ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Quoting four sources, including two Iranians, Reuters reported on Thursday that Iran had transferred \u200bIslamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel and military-related equipment on a flight from Tehran to\u00a0Yemen\u00a0on 13 July, as Tehran was calling for the Houthis to blockade the Bab el-Mandeb strait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ships had begun turning back from sailing through the narrow strait this week after the Houthis announced a blockade of Saudi ports, most notably the Red Sea port of Yanbu, which Riyadh has been using to ship oil to Asia during the conflict that has all but halted shipping through the strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The maritime data and analysis firm Lloyd\u2019s List Intelligence said the Houthi attacks put Saudi oil shipments from Yanbu at risk and presented a \u201cdouble whammy\u201d on top of the Hormuz disruptions, , adding that the Houthi threat \u201craises questions on the viability of this route\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump wrote on social media: \u201cIf [the Houthis] do this again, the US will hold Iran responsible, in that the Houthis are a Surrogate and\/or Proxy of Iran, and major military punishment will be inflicted upon Iran and, of course, the Houthis, themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Houthis\u2019 Saba news agency said the rebels had struck two tankers, the Encelia and the Layla, causing fires on both. There were no reports of casualties in their first reported attack on a vessel since they announced the blockade of Saudi-linked shipping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bab el-Mandeb is a vital shipping chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. About 12% of the world\u2019s trade, including a fourth of global container traffic, passes through there, moving between Europe and Asia via the Suez canal at the northern end of the Red Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump has been escalating his rhetoric against Iran in recent days, hinting the US is prepared to bomb an underground tunnel complex at the \u201cPickaxe mountain\u201d site where Israel alleges Tehran has hidden centrifuges used in uranium enrichment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Trump has struggled to get a grip on the spiralling crisis, during which Iran has occasionally launched lethal strikes against US bases and Washington\u2019s Gulf allies, he appears to have been sucked into an \u201cescalation trap\u201d, threatening ever more violent retaliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Wednesday, Trump said the US would destroy one bridge or power plant every time Iran shot at a ship in the strait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said Trump was seeking a \u201chead for an eye\u201d after the recent deaths of several US service members in an Iranian strike on the Muwaffaq Salti airbase in Jordan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, speaking on the outskirts of the Asean conference in Manila, Rubio said Iran was \u201cbegging for a deal\u201d, and insisted \u201cthey need to come to their senses\u201d and that they will \u201cpay a very heavy price for the things they are doing\u201d \u2013 all claims US officials have made before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With Trump\u2019s poll ratings in freefall, and his war against Iran deeply unpopular at home, the president and his administration are running short of time before the autumn midterm elections to find a resolution to the conflict on Washington\u2019s terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Underlining Trump\u2019s growing political problems, the US House of Representatives narrowly\u00a0passed a resolution\u00a0on Thursday to halt US military action in Iran, the second such warning to the president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Donald Trump has said he is close to deciding whether to launch \u201ca massive attack\u201d against Iran, on a scale larger than strikes already witnessed during the months-long conflict with Tehran. Speaking to the Axios news site, the US president said: \u201cI am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before. I am close to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":29189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"theguardian","_post_source_url":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[6349,5274,5304,11394,5443,7682,8173,1279,10767,9088,8440,7396,12246,9506,4066,6621,9567,8123,11355,10453,5579,6345,10918,10954,13157,12968,3095,6654,5205,4696,12899,8126,9833,8719,5572,8101,12287,9237,7964,6666,5441,1761,11973,5568,10302,11082,3805,12103,10390,6858,7348,5807,8160,1364,5655,5752,5250,11259,5349,11839,12972,5818,9425,7444,10329,5594,12605,5465,6563,6348,9516,11331,1151,10786,5251,2354,3954,36,13117,5509],"class_list":["post-52852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-antonio-guterres","tag-asia","tag-attack","tag-attacks","tag-bomb","tag-brent","tag-bridge","tag-circle","tag-conflict","tag-container","tag-crisis","tag-data","tag-diplomatic","tag-drone","tag-el","tag-europe","tag-explosions","tag-eye","tag-flight","tag-guard","tag-gulf","tag-guterres","tag-houthi","tag-international","tag-islamic","tag-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps","tag-israel","tag-jordan","tag-july","tag-lloyd","tag-marco-rubio","tag-match","tag-meeting","tag-middle-east","tag-military","tag-militia","tag-movement","tag-nio","tag-north","tag-nuclear","tag-oil","tag-oil-prices","tag-one","tag-palestinian","tag-plant","tag-port","tag-president","tag-price","tag-prices","tag-rebels","tag-red-sea","tag-risk","tag-saudi","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-security","tag-security-council","tag-ship","tag-shot","tag-social-media","tag-statehood","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-strike","tag-surrogate","tag-tehran","tag-trade","tag-traffic","tag-uk","tag-un","tag-uranium","tag-us","tag-us-military","tag-us-president","tag-us-secretary-of-state","tag-vessel","tag-war","tag-washington","tag-will","tag-world","tag-yanbu","tag-yemen"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52853,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52852\/revisions\/52853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}