By Parisa Hafezi, Maya Gebeily and Alexander Cornwell
President Donald Trump said the US is going to be hitting Iran “very hard over the next week”, shortly after issuing a partial 30-day waiver for purchases of sanctioned Russian oil, hoping to ease prices fuelled by the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Prices have been whipsawing on Trump’s comments about the likely duration of the war, which has prompted Iran to attack vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil.
Trump has previously said the war is “complete”, and also promised to guarantee the safety of vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. In a Fox News interview aired on Friday, Trump said the US would escort shipping there “if we needed to”. US vice-president JD Vance called for international co-operation to escort ships through the strait.
Benchmark Brent crude eased about 1% to about $99.50 in European trading, still up almost 40% since the start of the war, with European and Asian shares under pressure.
After nearly two weeks of war, 2,000 people have been killed, most of them in Iran, but many also in Lebanon and a growing number in the Gulf, which has for the first time in decades of Middle East conflicts found itself on the front line.
US forces have also suffered casualties. The US military confirmed that four of six crew members aboard a refuelling aircraft that crashed in western Iraq were dead.
Iran fired more missiles and drones at Israel, and the Israeli military launched strikes across Tehran and continued to attack the Iranian-allied Hezbollah militia across Lebanon and in the capital Beirut.
Iranian Press TV said a woman had been killed by an airstrike close to a rally in Tehran for Quds (Jerusalem) Day, one of many across Iran in support of Palestinians living in Israeli-occupied territory. Iranian media said President Masoud Pezeshkian and foreign minister Abbas Araqchi had attended the rally, in a gesture of defiance.
Israel’s military said its air force had struck more than 200 targets in western and central Iran over the past day, including ballistic missile launchers, air defence systems and weapons production sites.
The prospect that the jolt to global energy supplies could endure had boosted oil prices about 9% to $100 a barrel on Thursday, helping drive down US stocks.
With petrol and diesel prices rising at pumps in the US and around the world, the US on Thursday issued a 30-day licence for countries to buy Russian oil and petroleum products at sea — where it is not uncommon for consignments to be sold or change their buyer.
US to profit from higher oil prices
The International Energy Agency said on Thursday the war was creating the biggest oil supply disruption in history. Average US retail diesel prices hit $4.89 a gallon on Thursday, the highest since December 2022, data from the motorist association AAA showed.
Trump said the US stood to profit from higher oil prices.
“The US is the largest oil producer in the world, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money,” he said on social media on Thursday, adding that the priority was to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.
Also casting the disruption in a positive light, his treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, called the rise in oil prices a “temporary disruption that will result in a massive benefit to our nation and economy in the long term”.
In a post on social media, Trump said the US was “totally destroying the terrorist regime of Iran”.
“We have unparalleled firepower, unlimited ammunition, and plenty of time — watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today,” Trump said.
“They’ve been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th president of the United States of America, am killing them. What a great honour it is to do so!”
The news outlet Axios cited three officials from the Western Group of Seven powers as saying Trump had told G7 leaders in a virtual meeting on Wednesday that Iran was “about to surrender”.
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, in his first comments on Thursday, vowed to keep the Strait of Hormuz shut and urged neighbouring countries to close US bases on their territory or risk being attacked themselves.
Khamenei’s comments were read out by a television presenter and it was not clear why he had not appeared in person. Iranian officials have said he is lightly wounded; Trump has said he thinks Khamenei is alive but “damaged”.
US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday Khamenei is wounded and could be disfigured. “We know the new so-called not so supreme leader is wounded and likely disfigured. He put out a statement yesterday. A weak one, actually, but there was no voice and there was no video. It was a written statement,” Hegseth told a briefing.
“Iran has plenty of cameras and plenty of voice recorders. Why a written statement? I think you know why. His father — dead. He’s scared, he’s injured, he’s on the run and he lacks legitimacy.”
An Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday that the newly appointed supreme leader was lightly injured but was continuing to operate, after state television described him as war-wounded.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday issued a veiled threat to kill Khamenei even as he acknowledged that Israel’s joint air war with the US may not lead to a collapse of Tehran’s clerical government.
French President Emmanuel Macron said one French soldier had been killed and several wounded during an attack in northern Iraq, hours after an Italian base in the same area was attacked. The French soldiers were providing training as part of an international coalition fighting Islamic State militants.
Macron said the US’s waivers on sanctions against some Russian oil products to tame a price surge in oil are temporary and limited. He added that the G7 position remains that the conflict in the Middle East does not justify lifting sanctions on Russian oil.
“It is entirely true that the US has granted limited exemptions,” Macron told a press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris.
“As for the G7, the common position has indeed been to maintain sanctions against Russia, and for the Europeans and France, it is also to maintain them. The current situation in no way justifies lifting these sanctions,” he added.
The US issued a 30-day waiver for countries to buy sanctioned Russian oil and petroleum products stranded at sea, drawing criticism from Germany and other European allies on Friday but approval from Moscow.
Several homes in a Bedouin Arab town near an air base in northern Israel were heavily damaged overnight. It was not clear whether there had been a direct strike or falling debris from an interception. The injuries were mostly minor.
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