Iran launches new attacks, saying US will 'bitterly regret' sinking warship, calls for Trump's blood

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, March 6 ------ Iran launched a new wave of attacks at Israeli and American bases and threatened that the United States would “bitterly regret” torpedoing an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean, and a religious leader called for “Trump's blood,” while Israel said it had begun a “large-scale” attack on Tehran.

Israel announced multiple incoming missile attacks, and air sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Iranian state television said additional strikes also targeted U.S. bases. The Israeli military said it launched targeted attacks in Lebanon at the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group a “large-scale wave of strikes against infrastructure” in Iran’s capital, without elaborating. Explosions were heard in multiple locations in Tehran a short time later.

The U.S. Navy sank the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena Tuesday night in the Indian Ocean, killing at least 87 Iranian sailors, which Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi decried Thursday as “an atrocity at sea.” “Frigate Dena, a guest of India’s Navy carrying almost 130 sailors, was struck in international waters without warning,” he wrote on social media. “Mark my words: The U.S. will come to bitterly regret (the) precedent it has set.”

Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli, in one of the few clerical statements so far from Iran, said the country was “on the verge of a great test” and called on state television for "the shedding of Zionist blood, the shedding of Trump’s blood.” "Fight the oppressive America, his blood is on my shoulders,’” he said in a rare call for violence from an ayatollah, one of the highest ranks within the clergy of Shiite Islam.

The U.S. and Israel launched the war Saturday, targeting Iran’s leadership and killing Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as its missile arsenal and nuclear program. Leaders have suggested that toppling the government is a goal, but the exact aims and timelines have repeatedly shifted, signaling an open-ended conflict. The war has killed more than 1,000 people in Iran, more than 70 in Lebanon, and around a dozen in Israel, according to officials in those countries. It has disrupted the supply of the world’s oil and gas, snarled international shipping, and stranded hundreds of thousands of travelers in the Middle East.

Threats expanding across the Middle East

Countries around the region braced for potential dangers Thursday, a day after Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard threatened “the complete destruction of the region’s military and economic infrastructure.”

Qatar’s Interior Ministry said authorities were evacuating residents near the U.S. Embassy in Doha as a temporary precaution, without providing further details. Fighter jets could be heard overhead in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai, and Saudi Arabia said it destroyed a drone in its province bordering Jordan. A new attack off the coast of Kuwait appeared to expand the area where commercial shipping was in danger.

An explosion rocked the area early Thursday, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center run by the British military. It said a tanker apparently came under attack, but the agency did not offer a cause. Iran, in the past, has attacked ships by attaching limpet mines to them. Prior attacks since fighting began Saturday have happened in the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz, which connects it to the Persian Gulf and through which about a fifth of the world’s oil is shipped.

U.S. stocks rebounded on Wednesday after oil prices stopped spiking and reports gave encouraging updates on the American economy. But oil prices resumed their ascent early Thursday, and Brent crude, the international standard, is now up some 15% from the start of the conflict as Iranian attacks have disrupted traffic through the strait.

Source: mb.com.ph