DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran threatened to target recreational and tourist sites worldwide and insisted it was still building missiles. Friday's show of defiance came nearly three weeks into U.S.-Israeli strikes that have killed a slew of Tehran’s top leaders and hammered its weapons and energy industries.
Iran fired on Israel and energy sites in neighboring Gulf Arab states as many in the region marked one of the holiest days on the Muslim
calendar. Iranians were also celebrating the Persian New Year, known as Nowruz, a normally festive holiday that is more subdued this year.
With little information coming out of Iran, it was not clear how much damage its arms, nuclear or energy facilities have sustained since the war began Feb. 28 or even who was truly in charge of the country. But Iran has showed it is still capable of attacks that are choking off oil supplies and denting the global economy, raising food and fuel prices far beyond the Middle East.
The U.S. and Israel have offered shifting rationales for the war, from hoping to foment an uprising that topples Iran’s leadership to eliminating its nuclear and missile programs. There have been no public signs of any such uprising and no end in sight to the war.
Iran’s top military spokesman warned Friday that “parks, recreational areas and tourist destinations” worldwide won’t be safe for Tehran’s enemies.
The threat from Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi renewed concerns that Iran may revert to using militant attacks beyond the Middle East as a pressure tactic.
U.S. and Israeli leaders have said that weeks of strikes have decimated Iran’s military. Airstrikes have also killed its supreme leader, the head of its Supreme National Security Council and a raft of other top-ranking military and political leaders.
The Israeli military said Friday that Esmail Ahmadi, head of intelligence for the Basij, and internal security force, had been killed by a strike earlier in the week that hit other Basij leaders.
On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Iran’s navy was sunk and its air force in tatters, while adding that its ability to produce ballistic missiles had been taken out. Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard disputed the missile claim on Friday.
“We are producing missiles even during war conditions, which is amazing, and there is no particular problem in stockpiling,” spokesman Gen. Ali Mohammad Naeini was quoted as saying in Iran’s state-run IRAN newspaper.
A short time after the statement was released, Iranian state television said Naeini was killed in an airstrike.
The country’s new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei also released a rare statement, saying Iran’s enemies need to have their “security” taken away.
Khamenei hasn’t been seen since he succeeded his father, the 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the first day of the war.
Iran has stepped up its attacks on energy sites in Gulf Arab states after Israel bombed Iran’s massive South Pars offshore natural gas field earlier in the week.
Two waves of Iranian drones attacked a Kuwaiti oil refinery early Friday, sparking a fire. The Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery, which can process some 730,000 barrels of oil per day, is one of the largest in the Middle East. It was damaged Thursday in another Iranian attack.
Bahrain said a fire broke out after shrapnel from an intercepted projectile landed on a warehouse, and Saudi Arabia reported shooting down multiple drones targeting its oil-rich Eastern Province.
Heavy explosions shook Dubai as air defenses intercepted incoming fire over the city, where many were observing Eid al-Fitr, the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
In Iran, meanwhile, many were marking Nowruz even as Israel said it had launched new strikes, and explosions were heard over Tehran. The Persian New Year, which coincides with the spring equinox, is a tradition observed across southwestern Asia that dates back thousands of years.
Loud explosions could also be heard in Jerusalem after the Israeli army warned of incoming Iranian missiles. First responders said they treated two people around 70 years old who were lightly wounded.
In addition to steadily striking Iran, Israel has regularly hit Lebanon, targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants who have been firing rockets and drones into Israel.
On Friday, Israel broadened its attacks to Syria, saying it hit infrastructure there in response to what it described as attacks on the Druze minority. Syria’s state-run SANA news agency did not immediately acknowledge the attack.
More than 1,300 people have been killed in Iran during the war. Israeli strikes in Lebanon have displaced more than 1 million people, according to the Lebanese government, which says more than 1,000 people have been killed. Israel says it has killed more than 500 Hezbollah militants.
In Israel, 15 people have been killed by Iranian missile fire. Four people were also killed in the occupied West Bank by an Iranian missile strike.
At least 13 U.S. military members have been killed.
Iran’s attacks on energy infrastructure in the Gulf combined with its stranglehold on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and other critical goods are transported, has raised concerns of a global energy crisis.
Brent crude oil, the international standard, has soared during the fighting, and was around $107 in morning trading on Friday, up more than 47% since the start of the war.
Surging fuel prices come at a moment when many world leaders were already struggling to bring down high prices of food and many consumer goods. Asia is getting hit hard as most of the oil and gas exiting the Strait of Hormuz is transported there.
But the price shocks are reverberating throughout the world economy. Key raw materials — like helium used in making computer chips, and sulfur, a raw material in fertilizer — have been obstructed and could be in short supply soon, raising the prices of goods all the way down the supply chain.
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This story has been updated to correct the headline to show the war is nearly three weeks in, not four.
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Mednick reported from Jerusalem and Rising from Bangkok. Associated Press writer Giovanna Dell’Orto in Miami contributed.
