Topic:War

Iran has issued a warning to the world that "parks, recreational areas and tourist destinations" are not safe "for enemies", threatening to hunt down US and Israeli officials even while they are on holiday or visiting entertainment centres.

It comes as the US military confirms it is deploying thousands of additional marines and sailors to the Middle East, including an amphibious lander-ready group and another expeditionary unit of marines. 

Earlier, US President Donald Trump labelled America's NATO allies "cowards" for not helping to open the Strait of Hormuz. 

Follow our blog for live updates, as the US-Israeli war with Iran enters its fourth week. 

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By Hanan Dervisevic

If you're just joining us, here's a recap of the latest developments in the Middle East:

By Hanan Dervisevic

According to news agency Kyodo News, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says Tehran is prepared to let Japanese-related ships pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

Tehran has started talks with Tokyo about possibly opening the straight, Araghchi told the Japanese news agency in a phone interview on Friday.

"We have not closed the strait. It is open," Araghchi told Kyodo.

The foreign minister said that Iran is prepared to ensure safe passage for countries such as Japan if they coordinate with Tehran.

Japan depends on the Middle East for about 95 per cent of its oil supplies and gets around 90 per cent of its oil shipments via the strait.

The three-week-old war and subsequent surge in oil prices prompted Japan and other countries to release oil from their reserves.

Reporting with Reuters

By Maddy Morwood

The S&P 500 fell 1.5 per cent to close its fourth straight losing week, its longest such streak in a year. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 443 points, or 1 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite tumbled 2 per cent.

The losses deepened after oil prices accelerated to settle at $112.19 per barrel of Brent crude.

Stocks also bent under the weight of leaping yields in the bond market. Higher yields make mortgage rates and other borrowing more expensive for US households and companies, slowing the economy, and they grind down on prices for all kinds of investments.

Treasury yields have been jumping on worries the war with Iran will cause a long-term spike in oil and natural gas prices that drives up inflation.

Investors now see little room for central banks worldwide to cut interest rates to help their economies.

Reporting with AP

By Hanan Dervisevic

Virgin Australia says it will increase airfares as rising fuel prices and broader industry costs put pressure on the airline.

"Costs across the aviation sector continue to rise, now significantly exacerbated by the situation in the Middle East," a Virgin Australia spokesperson said.

"We are making necessary fare adjustments to reflect these cost pressures."

This comes as Qantas already hiked international ticket prices in response to rising fuel costs.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Energy Minister Chris Bowen said that fuel continues to arrive in Australia, and the country is better-placed to weather the Strait of Hormuz crisis than it was to cope with the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

By Hanan Dervisevic

The Wall Street Journal is reporting Iran fired two immediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia but did not hit the US-UK military base in the Indian Ocean.

One of the missiles failed in flight, while a US warship fired an SM-3 interceptor at the other, although it could not be determined if the interception succeeded, the newspaper said.

The WSJ did not specify when the missiles were fired. They cited multiple US officials on the matter.

Diego Garcia is a key airfield for the US' heavy bomber fleet.

Reporting with Reuters

By Hanan Dervisevic

Saudi Arabia has intercepted and destroyed 10 drones in its eastern region, according to the defence ministry.

In the previous couple of hours, the United Arab Emirates' defence ministry said it was responding to missile and drone attacks from Iran.

Kuwait's army also said it was confronting "hostile missile and drone attacks".

By Maddy Morwood

Lebanese state media say an Israeli airstrike hit a house in a southern town early on Saturday, killing one person and wounding two others.

"Israeli fighter jets launched a heavy strike at dawn on a house in the town of Ghandouriyeh ... resulting in one martyr and two wounded people who were pulled from under the rubble," the official National News Agency said.

This comes as the Israeli military says it is striking Hezbollah targets in Beirut.

Reporting with AFP

By Maddy Morwood

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has praised Iranians' steadfastness in the face of war, in a written statement read on Iranian television to mark the start of Persian New Year. He named this the year of a "resistance economy under national unity and national security".

In the statement, released on his Telegram channel, Mr Khamenei said that attacks against Türkiye and Oman were not carried out by Iran or its allied forces.

He also said the US and Israeli attacks were based on an illusion that killing Iran's top leaders could cause the overthrow of the government.

Mr Khamenei has not been seen in public since he became supreme leader following Israeli strikes that killed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and reportedly wounded him.

Airstrikes have also killed the head of its Supreme National Security Council and a raft of other top-ranking leaders.

Reporting with AP, Reuters

By Hanan Dervisevic

The US Treasury Department has said it is removing its own sanctions on Iranian crude oil and petroleum products for 30 days.

This was the third time the US has temporarily waived sanctions in about two weeks.

The licence applied to oil loaded on vessels as of March 20 and extends until April 19.

"By temporarily unlocking this existing supply for the world, the United States will quickly bring approximately 140 million barrels of oil to global markets, expanding the amount of worldwide energy and helping to relieve the temporary pressures on supply caused by Iran," US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement on X.

"In essence, we will be using the Iranian barrels against Tehran to keep the price down as we continue Operation Epic Fury."

The move follows the easing of sanctions on Russian oil last week.

By Maddy Morwood

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby says the airline will cancel about 5 per cent of this year's planned flights in the short term, as jet fuel prices surge.

"If prices stayed at this level, it would mean an extra $US11 billion [$15.6 billion] in annual expenses just for jet fuel," Mr Kirby said in a message to employees posted on its website.

The airline's current plan is to restore the full schedule later this year, he added.

Reporting with Reuters

By Maddy Morwood

Speaking on ABC Morning Breakfast, Grattan Institute's Energy Program Director Tony Wood also compared Australians panic buying fuel with buying toilet paper during COVID.

He said that trucking companies and farmers who had on-site storage had been filling up, resulting in what looks like a shortage of fuel.

"People rushing out and buying, you can see how we can quickly drain the supply fuel. But actually it is not an overall system shortage."

He did, however, admit, there is now a risk the supply "could become problematic" if the war continues.

"Australia is a long way from the rest of the world, and we're on the end of quite a long supply chain. People in regional and rural Australia especially are at the end of long supply chains in our country," he said.

"By the time things move through that, you can see how things getting disrupted really does have an impact."

By Maddy Morwood

Yesterday, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report outlining urgent demand-side measures that people can enact to help ease the global oil crisis caused by the Middle East conflict, warning it could take six months to fully restore oil and gas flows from the Gulf.

This morning, Grattan Institute's energy program director Tony Wood spoke to ABC Weekend Breakfast on what that could mean for Australia.

"The optimism that the government had was worthwhile trying, but so far that hasn't proved to be the outcome that we're seeing," he said.

He said the IEA's recommendations, such as working from home or carpooling, should be implemented by Australians.

By Maddy Morwood

In one upscale northern Tehran neighbourhood there are none of the usual decorations celebrating the Persian New Year.

“In the city, people are mostly staying at home. You hardly see anyone out on the street," said a woman who spoke in a series of voice messages to the Associated Press.

"Basically, there is no mood (for new year) in the city at all,” she said.

The normally festive Persian new year, known as Nowruz (which translates to "new day"), is celebrated by people not only in Iran but Afghanistan, Albania, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and  diaspora communities elsewhere in the world every year on March 21.

The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she fears reprisals, said she almost forgot about the holiday amid the fighting, until she saw someone carrying a hyacinth, a traditional flower of the celebration.

“This year, it feels much heavier ... everyone around is feeling bad,” she said.

Here's a story back from 2022 by ABC's Farz Edraki, who explains the celebration:

By Maddy Morwood

The US Energy Department said it had awarded contracts to loan 45.2 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) as of today.

Companies that have been awarded the SPR contracts include: BP Products North America, Gunvor USA, Marathon Petroleum and Shell Trading Co, the Energy Department said in a statement.

By Maddy Morwood

The Israeli military has issued evacuation warnings for seven neighbourhoods in Beirut's southern suburbs ahead of a possible attack, they said in a statement.

Reporting with Reuters

By Maddy Morwood

A short time ago, Donald Trump said he was "surprised" that Australia hadn't offered to join in the operation to help him keep the Strait of Hormuz open.

The US president also called on all countries that benefit from and use the Strait to "get involved".

"It's a simple military manoeuvre, it's relatively safe, but you need a lot of help ... in the sense of you need ships, you need volume," he said.

"It would be nice if the countries that use it, get involved."

Americas editor John Lyons is in Washington DC and says that countries are resistant to join Mr Trump because they "didn't plan for this war".

Watch his commentary here:

By Maddy Morwood

Though his administration for weeks has maintained that its four objectives remain "unchanged, unambiguous and consistent" since the operation began, Donald Trump added a fifth one in his social media post.

The four objectives had been to:

In his post on Friday, Trump enumerated those and added a fifth: "Protecting, at the highest level, our Middle Eastern allies" and listed America's Gulf partners.

By Maddy Morwood

In a post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump says the US is getting very close to meeting its objectives as it considers winding down its military efforts in the Iran war.

Mr Trump's statement seemed at odds with his administration's move to send more troops and warships to the region and request another $US200 billion from Congress to fund the war.

In his post, the president also left a muddled picture of whether the US would police the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping lane.

"The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other nations who use it — the United States does not!" Mr Trump said in the post.

"If asked, we will help these countries in their Hormuz efforts, but it shouldn't be necessary once Iran's threat is eradicated."

Reporting with AP, Reuters

By Maddy Morwood

 When Donald Trump bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities last year, he set in motion a plan the “thinkers” inside the Iranian regime had long been devising.

It’s now in play and it all comes down to a stretch of water that, at its narrowest point, is little more than 30 kilometres wide.

By moving so much of the war into the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf, Tehran has hit its adversaries where it hurts the most.

Analysts warn that while the United States' military is mighty, history shows in asymmetrical warfare, the lesser power can win the day, write my colleagues Lucia Stein, Emily Clark and Mark Doman.

Read more here:

By Maddy Morwood

The world's most vulnerable risk paying the highest price in the Iran war, says International Rescue Committee president David Miliband.

The former UK foreign minister warned that the war has "explosive consequences globally" and is creating a surge in humanitarian needs, pointing to more than one million people displaced in Lebanon in recent weeks.

The war has also created economic shock waves with food, fuel and fertiliser markets disrupted, Mr Miliband said.

He said up to 30 per cent of fertiliser trade is at risk, which could threaten more than 300 million people now facing acute food insecurity.

He added that the war is adding to more than 60 other conflicts, taking attention and funding away from crises in Gaza, Sudan and elsewhere.

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