Saudi forces down drones after Iran vows to target oil resources

Saudi forces intercepted more than two dozen drones Friday after Iran vowed to attack oil resources in the Middle East and said it would maintain a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz that has sent crude prices soaring.

Earlier on Thursday, Iran vowed to make the United States regret attacking the Islamic republic and said it would keep up a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz that has sent oil prices soaring.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that the Middle East war could lead to "the largest supply disruption" in oil industry history, but US President Donald Trump wrote on social media that defeating Iran's "evil empire" was more important than crude prices.

Trump has faced intense political pressure as the global economic fallout of the crisis has mounted, and he has given mixed messages as to when the US campaign might end.

Israel also came under attack early Friday from missiles launched by Iran, with the Israeli military saying its air defences were working to intercept them.

The International Energy Agency has warned that the Middle East war could lead to "the largest supply disruption" in the industry's history, but US President Donald Trump wrote on social media that defeating Iran's "evil empire" was more important than crude prices.

Trump has faced intense political pressure as the global economic fallout of the crisis has mounted, and he has given mixed messages as to when the US campaign might end.

Iran has unleashed waves of drone and missile strikes against neighbouring states hosting US military assets, including Saudi Arabia, whose defence ministry said Friday that its forces had intercepted a total of 28 drones.

The previous day, Iranian security chief Ali Larijani took aim at Trump, saying that the war "cannot be won with a few tweets" and that "we will not relent until making you sorry for this grave miscalculation."

His comments came after Iran's new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, issued a defiant statement, his first since being appointed Sunday after the death of his father and predecessor Ali Khamenei in a strike.

Mojtaba Khamenei, who was reportedly wounded in the strike, has yet to appear publicly since his nomination, and his message calling for vengeance was read by an anchor on state television.

"The lever of blocking the Strait of Hormuz must definitely be used," Khamenei said of the waterway through which a fourth of the world's seaborne oil trade usually transits.

The strait, which also normally accounts for a fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies, lies off Iran and is just 54 kilometres (34 miles) wide at its narrowest point.

'War of attrition'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the joint US-Israeli campaign was "crushing" Iran and the Tehran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Speaking in a televised media briefing, he said the war was intended "to create, for the Iranian people, the conditions to bring down this regime", in addition to hobbling its nuclear and missile programmes.

In an interview with AFP, Iran's deputy foreign minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi said Tehran was acting only in "self defence" and wanted to ensure that war could not be "imposed" on it again.

Takht-Ravanchi confirmed that Iran had been approached by some "friendly countries" to put an end to the conflict, without specifying which ones.

"We are telling them the same thing, that we want the ceasefire to be part of an overall formula for ending the war altogether," he said.

Fuel tanks, airport hit

Gulf states have borne the brunt of retaliatory attacks from Iran, which said Thursday that it would "set the region's oil and gas on fire" if its own energy infrastructure and ports were attacked.

With Gulf states slashing production and oil tankers stuck in the Gulf, benchmark oil prices have risen 40 to 50 percent since the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, threatening to crimp growth and stoke inflation.

Images from Bahrain showed thick smoke rising after a strike on fuel tanks in Muharraq, with residents told to stay inside and close their windows, while drones caused damage again at Kuwait's international airport and in downtown Dubai.

In Iraq, six French soldiers were wounded by a drone attack in the autonomous Kurdistan region in the country's north, the French military said Thursday.

And a US KC-135 refueling aircraft crashed in western Iraq, at least the fourth American military aircraft to be lost in the conflict, after three F-15 jets were downed by friendly fire.

'Extremely tense'

The war has upended daily life for Iranians.

A 30-year-old woman living in Kermanshah in western Iran said 90 percent of shops in her city had closed.

"People are desperately trying to withdraw their savings from the banks, as trust in them has vanished," she said. "Bread is now rationed. The population is extremely tense and outraged."

The conflict has also spread to Lebanon, where authorities reported 687 people killed by Israeli attacks, including at least 12 who died in a strike Thursday on Beirut's seafront, where displaced families were camping in tents.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Thursday that he was ordering troops to "prepare for expanding" attacks on Lebanon, and Israeli forces pushed further into southern Lebanon.

Israel's military said it hit Hezbollah command posts in "several waves of strikes" on Beirut and southern Lebanon on Thursday.

Israel also launched a new broad wave of strikes in Tehran, saying it had struck checkpoints of the Basij paramilitary force that has been deployed to suppress protests against the clerical government.

Iran's health ministry said on March 8 that more than 1,200 people have been killed in the war, a figure AFP has not been able to independently verify.

Three million people have been displaced by the war in Iran, according to figures issued Thursday by the UN's refugee agency.

Officials said 14 people had been killed in Israel since the start of the Iran war, while attacks in the Gulf have killed 24, including 11 civilians and seven US military personnel.