Dubai: Intense Iranian fire targeted the Gulf Arab states early Saturday as Israel and the United States kept up their airstrikes targeting the Islamic Republic.
There was no foreseeable end to the fighting. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration approved a new USD 151 million arms sale to Israel after Trump said he would not negotiate with Iran without its “unconditional surrender” and U.S. officials warned of a forthcoming bombing campaign they said would be the most intense yet in the weeklong conflict.
Iran’s U.N. ambassador said the country would “take all necessary measures” to defend itself.
Associated Press video showed explosions flashing and smoke rising over western Tehran as Israel said it had begun a broad wave of strikes. Also early Saturday, loud booms sounded in Jerusalem and incoming missiles from Iran had people heading to bomb shelters across Israel.
There were no immediate reports of casualties by Israel’s emergency services.
The U.S. and Israel have battered Iran with strikes, targeting its military capabilities, leadership and nuclear program. The stated goals and timelines for the war have repeatedly shifted, as the U.S. has at times suggested it seeks to topple Iran’s government or elevate new leadership from within.
In a sign of the widening nature of the conflict, sirens sounded early Saturday in Bahrain as Iranian attacks targeted the island kingdom. And Saudi Arabia said it destroyed drones headed toward its vast Shaybah oil field and shot down a ballistic missile launched toward Prince Sultan Air Base, which hosts U.S. forces.
In Dubai, several blasts were heard Saturday morning and the government said it had activated air defenses. Passengers waiting for flights out at Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest for international travel, found themselves ushered down into train tunnels at the sprawling airfield after the alert sounded.
Qatar’s energy minister, Saad al-Kaabi, warned in an interview with the Financial Times that the war could “bring down the economies of the world,” predicting a widespread shutdown of Gulf energy exports that could send oil to USD 150 a barrel.
The price for a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude rose above USD 90 on Friday for the first time in more than two years.
Writing for the Qatar-funded satellite news network Al Jazeera, a regional analyst warned Iran was making “a strategic miscalculation of historic proportions.” Al Jazeera, a pan-Arab satellite news network owned and funded by Qatar’s government, has been used in the past to signal Doha’s opinions on regional matters.
Sultan al-Khulaifi, a senior researcher at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, wrote: “By spreading the conflict to the Gulf, Tehran is doing precisely what Israel could not do alone: steering the war away from the Israeli-Iranian axis and transforming it into a confrontation between Iran and its Arab neighbors.”
On Saturday, the defense minister of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan’s army chief met to discuss ways to stop the attacks coming from Iran, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported. Saudi Prince Khalid bin Salman, a son of King Salman, talked with Field Marshal Asim Munir in Riyadh about the Iranian attacks. Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan have signed a mutual defense pact that defines any attack on either nation as an attack on both.
