The ultimatum that Donald Trump issued to Tehran to open the Strait of Hormuz, strategically important for supplying the world market with hydrocarbons, comes to an end in the early hours of Tuesday morning (GMT) while, on the 24th day of the war against Iran, Israel says it is preparing for several more “weeks” of hostilities.
If Iran has not opened by Monday night into Tuesday the sea passage, where ship traffic is almost completely paralyzed, the US President has threatened to “bomb and obliterate” Iranian power plants, “starting with the largest one”.
Given the time he posted this message via Truth Social, the day before yesterday, Saturday, his ultimatum will expire at 01:44 (Greek time), Monday afternoon Washington time, early Tuesday morning Tehran time.
“We may have to escalate to de-escalate,” his government’s finance minister, Scott Bessend, threw out yesterday, Sunday.
If Washington makes good on that threat, Tehran has warned it will permanently close the strait, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas transported by sea normally passes.
Already the Strait of Hormuz is nearly closed since the outbreak of the war that has set the Middle East ablaze — freight transport has been precipitated (-95%), according to the analytics firm Kpler. Very few trucks and oil tankers cross it now.
“Preamble to invasion”
While the US government maintains an atmosphere of doubt about the duration and eventual end of its military operations, Israel made clear yesterday that it is preparing “for weeks of fighting against Iran and Hezbollah,” a Lebanese Shiite movement aligned with Tehran.
The Israeli army is preparing “to intensify targeted ground operations and strikes” in Lebanon to push the Hezbollah threat “away from the border”, Chief of General Staff Major General Eyal Zamir has signaled.
He destroyed a strategic bridge in southern Lebanon shortly before because it was being used by Hezbollah. Footage captured by cameramen for the French news agency shows smoke billowing after the bombing on the Casmiya bridge, on the main road linking the Tyre region with the rest of the country.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun saw a “prelude to a ground invasion” and denounced the “dangerous escalation and blatant violation of his country’s national sovereignty”.
Two bridges over the Litani River, which flows through Lebanon some thirty kilometers north of the border with Israel, had already been bombed last Wednesday.
Nuclear facilities
Although Israel and the US assert that they have “decimated”, weakened the Iranian leadership since they started the war on February 28, Tehran continues its retaliatory attacks and threats.
Concern is growing over attacks targeting nuclear facilities.
The war has entered a “dangerous phase”, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adanom Gebresus stressed via X, calling on “all” warring parties to “exercise maximum military restraint and avoid any actions that could cause nuclear accidents”.
The night before last, two extremely devastating Iranian strikes injured over a hundred people, according to the official count, in southern Israel. One of the missiles hit a residential area a few kilometers from a nuclear research center in Dimona, a facility for which secrecy is being maintained.
Israel is considered the only country with nuclear weapons in the Middle East, despite pursuing a policy of “strategic rearmament” on the issue.
“We thought we were safe. We didn’t expect this,” Galit Amir, a nurse in Dimona, 50, told Agence France-Presse.
Putting Dimona in its crosshairs, Iran stressed that it had retaliated with a “hostile strike” against a nuclear plant in Natanz, south of the capital.
The Israeli military claimed it was “not aware” of the strike, with state-run KAN television reporting it was a US action.
The Iranian Atomic Energy Agency said “no radiation leakage” was reported at the facility, which had already been bombed in early March.
“Legitimate targets”
After these bombings, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called for “maximum restraint” to be exercised from a military perspective.
In launching the attack on Tehran on February 28, Israel and the US began a war that has sent hydrocarbon prices soaring, particularly after strikes on oil and gas facilities.
Following Donald Trump’s ultimatum on Hormuz, Tehran responded by threatening to target energy infrastructure, power plants and water desalination plants in the region, already choked by war, deeming them “legitimate targets”. He also mentioned companies with American shareholders.
Oil prices were rising shortly after the start of trading today with that of WTI, the US benchmark variety, topping $100.
If the war lasts “more than six months”, “all the world’s economies will suffer”, warned the chairman and chief executive of French hydrocarbon giant TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouillane, who estimates that currently somewhere “10 million barrels of oil a day cannot come out of the Gulf”.
Some twenty countries – including the United Arab Emirates, Britain, France, Japan – have said they are “ready to contribute to efforts” to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but they do not all mean the same thing.
In the Iranian capital, the number of US-Israeli bombings has diminished somewhat in recent days and markets have regained some zest. But anxiety and stress are prevailing. “The only common thing we feel at this time is the uncertainty about the outcome” of this war, sums up Shiva, 31, a resident of Tehran.
