The ongoing American-Israeli war with Iran, for all its complexity and global effects, boils down to a single question: Who can take the pain the longest? A surge in oil prices points to what may be Iran's most effective weapon and the United States' biggest vulnerability in continuing the campaign: Damaging the world economy.
Wednesday's major developments include Iranian attacks against commercial ships around the Strait of Hormuz and Dubai International Airport, escalating a campaign of squeezing the oil-rich Gulf region as global energy concerns mount.
The U.S. campaign of airstrikes in Iran is now in its 12th day with no end in sight. A U.S. commander says artificial intelligence has helped the military hit more than 5,500 targets in the country. An Israeli intelligence assessment also indicates that Iran's new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, was wounded at the start of the war.
Witnesses in Tehran said they heard loud airstrikes and heavy anti-aircraft fire Wednesday, and columns of smoke made the sky overcast as a layer of gray dust settled over the city. The air is filled with the distinctive smell of burnt powder and gasoline. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal.
The Israeli military is also striking Iran and its militant ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, where more than 800,000 people have been displaced by the fighting.
Here's the latest:
Ship hit in Persian Gulf off UAE
A container ship off Dubai in the Persian Gulf came under attack Thursday, sparking a small fire, the British military said.
The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said the attack happened just before dawn. It said an “unknown projectile” hit the vessel as it was some 65 kilometers (40 miles) off the coast of Dubai’s Jebel Ali port.
It added that the crew of the vessel were safe.
Brent crude oil tops $100 a barrel as Iran attacks on shipping worsen supply concerns
The price of a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, topped $100 a barrel early Thursday, just days after it spiked near $120.
Oil prices shot more than 9% higher as supply concerns worsened with Iranian attacks on commercial shipping around the Strait of Hormuz.
U.S. benchmark crude oil jumped to about $95 a barrel.
Israeli strikes kill 3 near Beirut
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Israeli strikes early Thursday a town in the hills overlooking Beirut killed three people and wounded a child.
Aramoun, a town about 10 kilometers (6 miles) south of Beirut where dozens of displaced families have found shelter, has been targeted twice since the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel renewed after Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel on March 2.
The Health Ministry also said the death toll from an earlier Israeli strike on central Beirut had risen to eight people, with 31 wounded.
Iraqi officials shut oil terminals after deadly strike hits Basra port
An attack on Iraq’s Basra port early Thursday killed at least one person and forced authorities to halt operations at all the country’s oil terminals, officials said.
Farhan al-Fartousi, the director-general of the General Company for Ports of Iraq, made the announcement in a statement carried by the state-run Iraqi News Agency on Thursday. Al-Fartousi said the attack targeted a ship engaged in a ship-to-ship transfer of oil in the Basra port on the Persian Gulf. He said it remained unclear if the ship was targeted by a flying or seaborne drone or a missile.
Rescuers recovered one dead body and helped 38 others after the attack. He said commercial ports in Iraq remained open, though the oil terminals had been shut.
Major fire strikes neighborhood home to Bahrain International Airport
A major fire struck a neighborhood in Bahrain’s capital home to the island kingdom’s international airport early Thursday after an Iranian attack, with authorities urging people in the surrounding area to close their windows due to the fumes.
The fire began in Bahrain’s Muharraq Island, which is home to Bahrain International Airport. Bahrain’s Interior Ministry described it as a blaze affecting oil tanks in the area. The airport has jet fuel tanks, while there’s also other tanks in the area for the kingdom’s oil industry.
Bahrain’s Interior Ministry put out an alert for people in surrounding neighborhoods “to remain in their homes, close windows and ventilation openings, as a precautionary measure against possible exposure to smoke from the ongoing fire being combated.”
Bahrain moved some aircraft out of the area of the airport early Wednesday.
The Iranian strike comes as the U.S. military’s Central Command published video showing its strikes targeting Iranian military aircraft in the ongoing war. Iran also has targeted Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates, the world’s busiest for international travel.
Fire put out at Dubai Creek Harbor after drone strike
Firefighters extinguished a blaze at a tower in Dubai Creek Harbor early Thursday morning after an Iranian drone strike.
The drone hit the Address Creek Harbour 2 tower in the neighborhood.
An image published by authorities appeared to show damage at two units in the building.
Saudi Arabia reports downing drones early Thursday
The country’s defense ministry said it downed drones in the kingdom’s east, including at least one trying to target its Shaybah oil field in the Empty Quarter desert.
CitiBank closes branches in UAE after Iran threat
CitiBank said it would close all its branches except one Thursday after a threat by Iran to target financial institutions in the region.
CitiBank said it made the decision “given the evolving situation within the country,” without elaborating.
Other financial institutions reportedly have urged their staff to work from home over the threat.
Authorities respond to drone that fell on building in Dubai
Dubai authorities are responding to a drone that fell on a building near Dubai Creek Harbour, a luxury waterfront development north of the country’s downtown, the Dubai Media Center said, adding that officials are carrying out evacuations.
Bahrain officials say Iranian-linked attacks targeted fuel tanks
Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior said Iranian-linked attacks targeted fuel tanks at a facility in Muharraq Governorate, northeast of the country’s capital, Manama.
“Authorities are taking the required procedures,” the ministry said.
7 killed, 21 wounded in Israeli strike on central Beirut
The Lebanese Health Ministry reported the casualties in the coastal area of Ramlet al-Bayda. The strike hit a car along the seaside, where dozens of displaced families were sheltering in makeshift tents.
Israel's military said it was not aware of a strike at that location.
Israeli strike hits a car in central Beirut, local media reports
An Israeli strike hit a car in the coastal area of Ramlet al-Bayda, according to local media. The seaside area is popular with tourists and is where dozens of displaced people have been sheltering.
Israel’s military didn’t immediately respond to a request for information.
The strike, which came without warning, occurred in an area with no notable Hezbollah presence that is far from Beirut’s southern suburbs, where the Israeli military has issued evacuation notices and said it is targeting Hezbollah positions overnight.
It was not immediately clear who was targeted, and the number of casualties was not known. Videos circulating from the strike site showed smoke rising from the seaside. The strike came near the site of a recent Israeli attack on a tourist hotel, where the Israeli military said it killed four members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
___
This entry has been updated to reflect that Ramlet al-Bayda is not on the east side of Beirut.
US says it will release 172 million barrels of oil as part of effort to combat prices
U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright says the U.S. will release 172 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as part of the International Energy Agency’s efforts to combat steep oil prices amid the Iran war.
Wright said the release would begin next week and take about 120 days “to deliver based on planned discharge rates.” He also said the U.S. would replace about 200 million barrels within the next year.
The U.S. had more than 415 million barrels in the SPR as of the end of last month. President Trump previously downplayed the importance of using reserve oil, but confirmed earlier Wednesday that his administration would “reduce it a little bit” and then fill it back up.
First week of war with Iran cost US $11.3 billion
The Pentagon provided the estimate to Congress in a briefing earlier this week, according to a person familiar with the situation who was granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting.
That comes after it reported spending $5 billion on munitions alone over the first weekend of the war.
The Trump administration had previously indicated it would be sending Congress a request for supplemental funding for the war, but that appears to have cooled, for now.
Sen. Roger Wicker, the GOP chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday that he was not expecting the supplemental request this month.
___
— By Lisa Mascaro
US defense secretary calls for review of military lawyers’ focus to prioritize ‘support to the warfighter’
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argued that military attorneys need to be focused on advising commanders on operations and in deployed environments where “seconds and minutes count.”
Hegseth’s announcement comes as scrutiny over civilian casualties in the Iran war intensifies, including the bombing of a girl’s school that evidence suggests was likely caused by U.S. airstrikes.
“Commanders need agile, independent, dead-on legal advice that enables decisive action, not endless process or turf wars,” Hegseth said in a video posted to X.
Hegseth said military legal support needs a “hard reset” after becoming “bloated and duplicative.”
“Our warriors deserve legal teams as lethal and focused as they are,” Hegseth said.
Israel says it has begun ‘wave of strikes’ in Iran’s capital
Minutes after saying Iran had launched missiles into Israel very early on Thursday morning, Israel’s military said it had begun a “wide-scale wave of strikes” in Tehran.
The last such announcement was early Wednesday afternoon. Israel’s military also said it was targeting Hezbollah with strikes and raids in various parts of Lebanon. That includes the capital Beirut, where loud booms were heard in the central portion of the city early Thursday morning.
Sirens wailed and loud explosions were heard early Thursday in Jerusalem
Alerts also blared in the north, where Hezbollah has fired drones and rockets into Israel.
Israel’s military said shortly after midnight that it was working to intercept missiles launched from Iran.
Russia’s UN envoy says there are no negotiations to end the war in Iran
Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia was responding to a question about the possibility of negotiations following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s talks with U.S. President Donald Trump and Arab leaders.
Nebenzia said Iran was ready to continue negotiations when the U.S. and Israel launched “a premeditated, deliberate attack” on Feb. 28.
“There are no negotiations, although Iran expressed willingness for negotiations,” he told reporters after the Security Council rejected a Russian-drafted resolution on the war.
Nonetheless, Nebenzia said, “We are ready to help to get out of the dire situation the whole region and the United States got itself into.”
Police in Bahrain arrest 6 people accused of posting videos at sites of Iranian strikes
They were arrested for “filming and posting videos related to the aftermath of the Iranian aggression, expressing sympathy and glorifying its hostile acts,” the country’s Interior Ministry said.
The ministry said Bahrain’s anti-cybercrime directorate arrested the suspects and referred them to prosecutors after their videos circulated on social media, “potentially misleading public opinion, spreading fear among citizens and residents and harming security and public order.”
Bahraini authorities have arrested dozens of people accused of documenting Iranian strike sites or participating in pro-Iran demonstrations in the Shiite-majority, Sunni-ruled nation. Iran is majority Shiite.
Drone attacks hit Iraq’s Kurdistan region, oil ship targeted near southern port
Drone attacks were launched late Wednesday toward the cities of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah. One intercepted drone fell near the Divan Hotel in the Saad Abdullah Conference Hall complex in Irbil, a venue for high-level political meetings.
In southern Iraq, an oil vessel flying the Australian flag was struck near Khor Al-Zubair Port, according to two Iraqi navy officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
The attack occurred in a loading area within Iraqi territorial waters, the officials said, adding that 25 members of the crew were rescued. It was not immediately clear whether any others remained unaccounted for.
Videos circulating online showed a large vessel engulfed in flames, with massive plumes of fire and thick black smoke billowing into the sky.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks.
___
— By Stella Martany and Qassim Abdul-Zahra
Top Senate Democrat says Trump is following his advice to tap Strategic Petroleum Reserve
“Trump is doing what I called for three days ago, after needlessly sowing additional chaos and uncertainty,” U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement Wednesday. He added that Trump has “already created a lot more problems than this will solve – from the Strait of Hormuz blockade to his poorly planned and reckless war.″
Trump said Wednesday he’ll tap the oil reserve “and then we’ll fill it up.” He didn’t specify how many barrels of oil the U.S. would release.
Trump frequently criticized former President Joe Biden for tapping the oil reserve to try to lower gas prices.
Fuel tanks on fire at Omani port amid Iran attacks
Fire crews were working to contain a blaze Wednesday at the fuel storage tanks at Oman’s Port of Salalah, amid days of Iranian attacks, according to the Oman News Agency.
Kuwait’s foreign ministry condemned what it said was Iran’s targeting of the port and the fuel tanks, saying hitting such economic facilities was a “dangerous escalation” that threatened global trade. Videos showed thick plumes of black smoke and large flames rising from the fuel tanks.
Trump, in continued contradictions, says Iran didn’t have ‘nuclear potential’ after last summer’s strikes
The president said that after the strikes with Israel last summer on Iran’s nuclear program: “We obliterated it. They don’t have nuclear potential.”
But, Trump said, without offering specifics, that Iran “started again.”
“That’s why we got to finish it, right? We don’t want to go back every two years.”
Trump, along with others in his administration, have said as they justified the strikes on Iran that the country was weeks away from a nuclear weapon — despite claiming last summer’s strikes had destroyed the program.
Trump says Iran is ‘virtually destroyed,’ promises to ‘finish the job’
Speaking at an event in Kentucky, the president said the U.S. has won the war in Iran but isn’t ready to end it.
“We don’t want to leave early, do we? We’ve got to finish the job,” the president said.
He said the U.S. knocked out 58 naval ships and eliminated Iran’s air force.
“You never like to say too early, ‘We won,’” he said. “We won.”
Iranian diplomat says Security Council resolution seeks to ‘distort the realities’ of the war
Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani said the resolution adopted by the Security Council on Wednesday, which does not mention that U.S. and Israeli strikes launched the war, “deliberately ignores the root causes of the current crisis.”
“The very purpose of this biased and politically motivated text, which was pushed by Israeli regime and the United States, is clear: to reverse the roles and positions of victim and aggressor,” Iravani told the 15-member council.
Trump says he will tap US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to ‘bring prices down’
During an interview Wednesday with WKRC Local 12 in Cincinnati, Trump was asked about tapping the reserve and said, “Well, we’ll do that and then we’ll fill it up.”
He added, “Right now we’ll reduce it a little bit, and that brings the prices down.” He didn’t specify how many barrels of oil the U.S. would release.
Trump frequently criticized the administration of former President Joe Biden for tapping the reserve to try and bring down gas prices.
Security Council rejects Russian resolution urging a halt to hostilities in the Middle East
The Russian proposal failed to reach the nine votes needed to pass.
The one-page text makes no mention of Iran, Israel, the U.S. or the Gulf states — all countries involved in the conflict — but simply urges military activities to cease. It also condemns attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure.
Russia, China, Pakistan and Somalia were the only countries that supported the draft resolution. Other nations called it hypocritical for Russia to call for end of hostilities despite its own war with Ukraine.
Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, had urged its adoption calling it “an impartial document” aimed at “de-escalating the situation.”
US ambassador says Iranian attacks brought Gulf countries together
Even before the Iranian ambassador got to speak, Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Tehran’s diplomat would present lies during the Security Council session on its actions in the region.
Waltz said Iran’s repeated claims that it is only targets U.S. military bases in the Gulf is a lie.
“These attacks were so brutal and so indiscriminate, as Iran shoots in all directions, that nations that previously had serious disagreements have now joined together,” he said. “They’ve now spoken as one voice.”
Israeli jets pound Beirut’s southern suburbs after a large-scale Hezbollah rocket attack
Simultaneous blasts rocked the Lebanese capital's densely populated southern suburbs — an area known as Dahiyeh — where large fires and plumes of smoke could be seen Wednesday evening.
The Israeli military said it would respond aggressively after Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets at the same time into northern Israel, in one of the largest attacks in the current conflict. Israel struck what it said was infrastructure belonging to the militant group.
The exchange marks an apparent escalation in the past week of fighting, which has killed more than 600 people in Lebanon and displaced about 800,000 others in the small country.
Russia and China blast UN resolution on Iranian attacks for not mentioning Israeli-US strikes
After abstaining from the U.N. Security Council resolution that demanded a halt to Iran’s attack on Gulf countries, the Chinese and Russian ambassadors defended their position, saying that the Bahrain proposal was “extremely unbalanced” in not mentioning the strikes against Tehran that began this war.
“It muddies up the cause and effect. And if someone who is not well-versed in international affairs reads this then this person will be left with the impression that Tehran, on its own volition, and out of malice, conducted an unprovoked attack on Arab states,” Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said during a Security Council session Wednesday.
Both Nebenzia and China’s U.N. envoy Fu Cong said they attempted to negotiate with Bahrain and the U.S. to include the initial strikes from Israel and the U.S. on Feb. 28 that launched the war, but the final resolution text ended up “unbalanced.”
Oil reserve release makes up for just 3 weeks of lost supply, expert says
“We’re basically talking about weeks, and not months, of supply,” said Bruce Bullock, director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University.
Bullock said the 400 million barrels of crude oil are meant as a short-term bridge while markets wait to see how the war unfolds. If the conflict drags on or the Strait of Hormuz stays blocked, reserves may need to be released more slowly, he said.
But if the war ends soon, he added, the extra supply could trigger a sharp drop in oil prices.
Trump tells FIFA chief that Iran remains welcome for World Cup
Even as leaders in Iran say it’s “not possible” for the country to participate in this year’s World Cup, the U.S. president is indicating Iran’s team is still welcome in the United States.
Trump met privately with soccer chief Gianni Infantino on Tuesday at the White House, according to the FIFA president’s Instagram account.
During the meeting, Trump “reiterated that the Iranian team is, of course, welcome to compete in the tournament in the United States,” Infantino wrote in the Instagram post.
A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, confirmed Trump’s message to Infantino about Iran’s participation.
Since June, Iran has been subject to a travel ban into the U.S. as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. But athletes and coaches from the target nations are exempt, which means the Iranian team would be allowed in.
The U.S. is hosting the tournament with Canada and Mexico from June 11 to July 19.
AP video shows Israeli strikes on a Gaza tent camp after an evacuation order
Shortly after ending their daily fast for Ramadan, displaced Palestinians sheltering west of Gaza City said they received phone calls from apparent Israeli military personnel ordering them to get out of the area within five minutes.
“They called us and told us to evacuate. We cannot breathe. And now they set our tents on fire. Where can we go?” said Ibtessal al-Shanbary, who escaped with a backpack and whatever small belongings she could hastily grab from her tent.
Anssar camp was struck three times Wednesday evening, witnesses said; the first two were warning strikes, and the last one was a major strike that sparked a huge fire and sent plumes of smoke into the sky.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
