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Beirut/Tel Aviv10:00 a.m. March 20
Tehran11:30 a.m. March 20
Iran War Live Updates: Oil Prices Retreat and More Attacks Are Reported
The price of oil was easing after the Trump administration sought to calm markets. Israel said it was striking Tehran and several U.S. allies reported incoming attacks.
The price of oil was retreating on Friday, a day after gyrating sharply, but it remained elevated as investors feared that recent attacks on energy infrastructure in the Persian Gulf would have long-term consequences.
As the war in the Middle East neared its fourth week, several U.S. allies in the region said they were responding to incoming drones and missiles. Israel said it had launched targeted attacks on Tehran after missiles struck northern Israel overnight.
In Washington on Thursday, a day after airstrikes on critical gas infrastructure in Qatar and Iran, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the United States was planning to lift sanctions on Iranian oil to lower prices, reversing years of measures to cripple the country’s economy.
President Trump said he had told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to stop attacking Iran’s energy fields. He also tried to reassure Americans by saying that the crisis would be temporary.
“I’m not putting troops anywhere,″ Mr. Trump said when he was asked about using ground troops. “If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”
Asked about the economic impact of the war, the president said, “I hate to make this excursion, but we are going to have to do it.” Then he added: “It will be over soon,” without explaining.
On Friday, benchmark stock indexes were higher in South Korea and China as the price of Brent crude fell to $107 a barrel from a high of $119 a day earlier.
But in one sign that the war could have long-term repercussions on energy markets, the state-owned company QatarEnergy said that it would take up to five years to repair “extensive damage” to gas facilities damaged by attacks on Wednesday and Thursday. Qatari officials blamed the strikes on Iran, which had vowed to retaliate against an earlier attack on its largest gas field, one it blamed on Israel.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on Thursday that American warplanes were pressing deeper into Iranian territory and striking naval drones, missiles and launchers along the coastline near the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway that Iran has effectively blockaded.
Attacks continued against U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf early Friday. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates said they were intercepting drone and missile attacks, which Emirati and Bahraini officials said were coming from Iran. The authorities in Bahrain said that falling shrapnel had started a fire at a warehouse.
In Israel, a man was killed after a missile attack overnight, according to the country’s emergency service. The Israeli military said it had launched a “wave of strikes” against Iranian government infrastructure early on Friday.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
War budget: Mr. Trump said he would seek an additional $200 billion from Congress to fund the war with Iran. The sum, which is nearly a quarter of the United States’ annual defense budget, has already encountered some resistance from Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
Jet fuel: Governments in Asia have scrambled to keep flights running as the price of jet fuel surged to record levels, forcing airlines to cancel thousands of flights and stranding tens of thousands of passengers.
Stranded seafarers: About 20,000 seafarers were trapped in the Gulf because of the war in Iran, according to the United Nations International Maritime Organization. A safe passageway should be established for seafarers who “find themselves with very little assistance,” said Arsenio Dominguez, the agency’s secretary general.
The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation said drone attacks caused fires at the Mina Al-Ahmadi Refinery early Friday, according to Kuwaiti state media.
Oil continued its climb down, retreating from a high of $119 a barrel, and stocks in Asia steadied but traded mostly lower on Friday.
Oil prices had been climbing fast this week, after a new round of attacks on major energy facilities in Iran and Qatar raised concerns about energy supplies.
Oil moves lower in quiet trading.
The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark, was about $108 a barrel on Friday. It surged as high as $119 on Thursday, an increase of nearly 10 percent, before eventually settling at $108.65.
West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, was trading at about $94. It settled at $95.55 on Thursday.
Oil and natural gas prices shot up this week after Iran and Qatar said Israel had struck South Pars, a vast offshore gas field the countries share, in an airstrike that affected Iranian facilities. A state-owned Qatari energy company said that a major energy hub in the country, Ras Laffan Industrial City, had sustained “extensive damage” from missile attacks. Qatari officials blamed Iran for the attack.
Investors and analysts across the world are focused on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital trading route for oil and natural gas that normally carries as much as one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. Shipping traffic exiting the Persian Gulf through the strait has been effectively halted because of the risk that vessels could be attacked.
Price of Brent Crude Oil
Gasoline prices jump again.
Gas prices rose again on Friday, with the national average at $3.91 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club. The increase has raised the cost for drivers almost 31 percent since the war began.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a television interview on Thursday that the U.S. government was considering other measures to try to lower prices. It “may unsanction the Iranian oil” that is already being shipped, about 140 million barrels, and could also release more oil from its own strategic reserves.
Diesel prices have increased even more quickly, going up again on Friday to $5.16 a gallon, up 37 percent since the start of the war.
Stocks in Asia mostly fall.
Stocks in Asia mostly declined on Friday. Benchmark indexes were slightly higher in South Korea and Thailand but fell in other places. Markets in Japan were closed for a national holiday.
U.S. futures pointed to a flat open by the S&P 500 index when markets resume trading in the United States. The S&P 500 fell 0.3 percent on Thursday, bringing its losses since the war began at the end of last month to 3.7 percent.
Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, noted on Wednesday that the inflationary impact from the war was likely to keep the Fed from lowering interest rates in the near future. Like the Fed, the European Central Bank, Bank of England and Bank of Japan held interest rates steady on Thursday.
Two days of attacks on Gulf energy sites
Iran hit energy infrastructure across the Gulf after Israel attacked a major Iranian gas field.
Price of Brent Crude Oil
Attacks continued against U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf early Friday. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates said they were intercepting drone and missile attacks, which officials in Bahrain and the Emirates said were coming from Iran. The authorities in Bahrain said that a warehouse fire ignited by falling shrapnel had been extinguished.
The Israeli military said it was targeting Iranian government infrastructure in the capital, Tehran, in a “wave of strikes” early on Friday morning in the Middle East. The announcement came shortly after the Israeli military said people were free to leave protected spaces after an Iranian missile launch it detected.
Iran’s military launched another wave of missiles at Israel, Iranian state media said early Friday. Israel’s public broadcaster reported a fire breaking out in Haifa and shrapnel falling at two other sites in the northern part of the country, as well as interception fragments that fell in Jerusalem. No casualties were reported.
Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry said it had intercepted several drones.
United Arab Emirates security authorities said they had dismantled an illegal network operated by Iran and the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, the Emirati state news agency reported early Friday in the Middle East. The group operated under a fictitious commercial cover and coordinated with parties linked to Iran and Hezbollah to launder money, finance terrorism and threaten national security, according to the Emirati security authorities.
President Trump asserted on Thursday that he had no plans to commit ground forces to the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, even though he has acknowledged he is contemplating moves that could drag the military into land combat operations.
Mr. Trump’s comments still left some room for him to reverse course.
“I’m not putting troops anywhere,” Mr. Trump told a reporter who asked about using ground troops. “If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.”
The president has spent several days alternating between threats to escalate strikes on Iran — which at times he has insisted are an “operation” or an “excursion” instead of a war — and promising that the hostilities are on the brink of completion.
His latest comments come just two days after Mr. Trump said that he was “not afraid” to put U.S. boots on the ground.
They also come amid revelations that the Pentagon has asked for $200 billion to pay for its war operations against Iran, a sum that is expected to encounter resistance on Capitol Hill.
The fighting has been steadily escalating since the United States and Israel first struck Iran three weeks ago. Overnight Israel and Iran exchanged a series of strikes on key energy infrastructure sites. Israel struck Iran’s processing complex for the South Pars natural gas field, and Qatar blamed Iran for missiles that damaged Ras Laffan International City, a major energy hub.
Those strikes shocked global markets, sending oil prices soaring before falling later in the day. The turmoil may have prompted Mr. Trump to speak in calmer tones when challenged about the negative economic impact the war was having.
He said on Thursday that while he hated to attack Iran, he felt it was necessary, even though oil prices would rise and the economy might “go down a little bit.”
“I thought there was a chance it could be much worse,” he said. “It’s not bad, and it will be over with pretty soon.” He provided no further explanation.
Despite Mr. Trump’s efforts at reassurance, the administration was sending signals that it was bearing down for a longer fight. It was not immediately clear what operations the $200 billion the Pentagon was seeking would pay for, but even at the steep price tag of recent operations — the first six days alone cost more than $11.3 billion, officials recently told lawmakers — that sum could most likely sustain operations for months.
The United States is currently weighing whether to attempt a takeover of Kharg Island, where Iran loads most of the oil it produces onto tankers. The United States struck what it described as several military sites on Kharg Island over the weekend, though Mr. Trump has repeatedly pointed out they left the oil infrastructure alone. On Wednesday, however, he also threatened that the United States could destroy Iran’s oil infrastructure or its electrical grid.
The United States is also deciding whether to attempt to seize the underground nuclear site at Isfahan, where Iran stores most of its 970 pounds of near-bomb-grade nuclear fuel. Either operation would likely require ground troops.
Last week, the United States began moving 2,500 Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit from the Indo-Pacific region to the Middle East, adding to approximately 50,000 U.S. troops already in the region. The selection of that unit, which has expertise in conducting ground operations buttressed by sea and air support, suggests that the United States might be planning raids into Iran, potentially against the islands from which Iran has been launching fast boats capable of mining the Strait of Hormuz.
The easing of oil prices on Thursday afternoon signals a slight exhale from nervous investors. But the market swings are a reminder of what analysts say is a stubborn truth: Prices will likely not dip meaningfully until the region is secure.
“It really comes down to when tankers can securely flow through the strait again,” said Jim Burkhard, the head of research for oil markets at S&P Global Energy. “But then you will have bottlenecks even after that opens.” He added that tankers will be backed up, and to get huge refineries online again, “it’s not like you flip a switch and there you go.”
Missile attacks on Wednesday and Thursday targeting the Ras Laffan energy hub in Qatar reduced the country’s liquefied natural gas export capacity by 17 percent, according to Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, the country’s energy minister and head of QatarEnergy, the state-owned energy company. He said damage from missiles will take three to five years to repair. Qatar halted L.N.G. output earlier this month. It is the world’s second largest L.N.G. exporter after the United States.
President Trump said on Thursday that he had complained to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel about the bombing of one of Iran’s largest offshore gas fields, exposing the two allies’ sharply different strategies as they try to disarm Iran, and in the case of Israel, trigger “state collapse.”
Asked about the Israeli strike, which sent oil markets reeling, Mr. Trump said, “I told him don’t do that,” and he suggested that Mr. Netanyahu “won’t do that” again in the future.
“We’re independent, we get along great,” said Mr. Trump, who spoke to reporters as he welcomed Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, in the Oval Office. He insisted that the U.S. and Israeli approaches were “coordinated.”
Three Israeli officials briefed on the strike on the gas field said that the United States was informed before the attack. But Mr. Trump, in a Truth Social posting, suggested he knew nothing about it, and said the United States did not participate.
In a war that is about to complete its third week with no end in sight, the attack and the furious counterstrikes on the energy facilities of Persian Gulf states revealed that the two allies were clearly not coordinated in their approach.
European officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the military operations over the past few days were more evidence of Israel’s belief that if it can dismantle Iran’s main sources of revenue and decapitate its political, military and intelligence leadership, the country will devolve into what the Israelis call “state collapse.”
The European view is that the result will be the opposite: Iran’s forces will escalate, using its surviving drones and missiles to destroy the vulnerable infrastructure of its neighbors, in what will become an existential battle.
Israel has been targeting the Iranian leadership, and with the attack on the South Pars gas field — a vast natural gas field in the Gulf run jointly by Iran and Qatar — it was striking directly at Iran’s ability to generate revenue. The Iranians responded with a missile attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, significantly damaging one of the Gulf state’s most critical energy hubs.
Mr. Trump clearly worries that such attacks and counterattacks will result in even greater surges in the price of oil and gas, and make shippers even more fearful of transiting the Strait of Hormuz. So he has been trying to preserve Iran’s oil and gas infrastructure and keep the country from retaliating at energy facilities throughout the Gulf. With every piece of evidence that the war is escalating, the price of oil increases, and Mr. Trump’s aides are scrambling to contain the economic ripple effects, starting with oil prices.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that to calm the markets, the United States was thinking about releasing more from the Strategic Oil Reserve, which the administration had failed to refill to capacity in the run-up to the war. But more strikingly, he has discussed suspending sanctions on Iranian oil already at sea — in an effort to free up roughly 140 million barrels — as another way to tamp down prices.
That would, of course, bring more revenue to Iran, but Mr. Bessent insisted that “we will be using the Iranian barrels against the Iranians to keep the price down for the next 10 or 14 days, as we continue this campaign.”
At every moment, Mr. Trump and Mr. Bessent are trying to signal to the markets that they have everything under control, even amid evidence that their effort to contain Iran’s retaliation — and the markets’ response — is failing. Mr. Trump tried to characterize his conversations with Mr. Netanyahu as a modest difference of opinion. “On occasion, he’ll do something,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Thursday, “and if I don’t like it, and so we’re not doing that anymore.”
In their public explanations of the status of the war, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, contended anew on Thursday that the United States was hitting all of its targets. Mr. Hegseth stressed the attacks on Iran’s defense industrial sites, so that it cannot replace missiles, launchers and drones destroyed in what has been an aerial hide-and-seek operation.
They spoke about dropping 5,000-pound bombs earlier this week at a suspected missile storage site near the Strait of Hormuz, part of an effort to keep Iran from being able to harass shipping through the 21-mile-wide stretch that has become a bottleneck for oil and gas exports. The weapon it used was the new GBU-72/B, a bunker-busting bomb that appeared to be directed at cruise-missile storage sites along the strait.
“To date we’ve struck over 7,000 targets across Iran and its military infrastructure,” Mr. Hegseth insisted, saying that Thursday would be “the largest strike package yet,” repeating his vow of “death and destruction from above.”
But the speed of the Iranian retaliation for the South Pars attack was evidence that the United States had not gained what military strategists call “escalation dominance,” the ability to keep an adversary from further escalating its response. And Mr. Hegseth repeated that he would provide no “definitive time frame” for declaring that it had achieved its objectives.
In Mr. Hegseth’s telling, the entire war is playing out according to plan. But evidence to the contrary abounds. The rush to find allies to patrol the strait — which so far has resulted in no takers — and the scramble to contain increases in energy prices suggests that the administration continues to be surprised at Iran’s ability to strike back. Its skillful asymmetric attacks are designed to drive prices up and stock markets down in the United States — metrics that get Mr. Trump’s attention.
Washington’s fear now is that the Gulf countries, which have shown considerable restraint in not responding to Iranian missile and drone attacks, will begin retaliating. On Wednesday, shortly after the Israeli attack on South Pars, part of the world’s largest offshore gas fields, two waves of incoming ballistic missiles were intercepted over Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, according to the Saudi Defense Ministry.
The kingdom’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, warned that his government reserved the right “to take military actions if deemed necessary.”
“We will not shy away from protecting our country and our economic resources,” he said at a news conference early Thursday.
He would not say how long Saudi patience with attacks would stay in place. “Do they have a day, two, a week?” the prince asked. “I’m not going to telegraph that.”
He added that “what little trust” there was between the kingdom and Iran had “completely been shattered.” The countries re-established diplomatic relations in 2023.
Vivian Nereim contributed reporting from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, rose as high as $119 per barrel earlier on Thursday, before settling lower at $108.65, as comments by President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel appeared to calm investors’ nerves over the day. Still, the rising oil price nudged stocks downward. The S&P 500 ended the day 0.3 percent lower.
Shrapnel from an Iranian missile attack that fell in the Old City of Jerusalem this week came close to hitting one of Christianity’s holiest sites.
Instead of striking the Church of the Holy Sepulcher on Monday, though, debris from the missile’s interception damaged a roof of a nearby building belonging to the Greek Patriarchate, the local seat of Orthodox Christianity, according to church officials. Another shard landed inside the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, the third-holiest sanctuary in Islam, the Israeli police said.
The Middle East war that began with American-Israeli attacks on Iran in late February is the latest to send missiles, drones and fighter jets arcing across the region. And U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran have already damaged cultural heritage sites there. Among them: the Golestan Palace in the capital, Tehran, a UNESCO World Heritage site that dates to the 14th century.
Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks kicked off the ongoing Mideast crisis, Jerusalem, revered by Christians, Muslims and Jews, has seen far fewer attacks than the coastal cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa. Analysts say that Iran and allies like Hamas and Hezbollah might have considered firing directly at Jerusalem to be too risky because of the potential to accidentally level an ancient holy site.
But in the past few days, debris from missile interceptions by Israeli air defenses has landed at several places across the city. Dvir Tamim, a local Israeli police commander, said in a statement that some of the fragments were three or four yards long.
Jerusalem is divided between the mostly Jewish neighborhoods of West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem, where many Palestinians live. They comprise roughly 40 percent of the city’s population.
Adnan al-Husseini, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, said part of a missile struck his garden on Monday in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah before being carted away by the police.
“When there are aerial clashes, a piece can fall randomly on any of these old buildings and damage them,” Mr. al-Husseini said, referring to the holy sites. “Fortunately, we’ve managed to avoid that for now.”
Jerusalem’s Old City is less than a square mile in area, but it possesses a thicket of sites holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians. Normally bustling with tourists in peacetime, the streets are now empty and the shops shuttered.
The Al Aqsa Mosque compound, where debris fell earlier this week, is deeply sacred to both Muslims and Jews, who revere it as the site of two biblical temples. After the war began, the Israeli authorities closed the sanctuary, citing public safety, drawing frustration and anger from Palestinians.
Just beneath Al Aqsa lies the Western Wall, another major Jewish holy site. A few hundred yards to the west, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, traditionally believed to be the site of Jesus’ burial and resurrection, draws thousands of pilgrims each year.
The same attack caused a massive chunk of debris to strike in the Palestinian neighborhood of Ras al-Amud, shattering part of the roof on Ahmed Al-Abbasi’s house. Mr. Abbasi said the police told him that it was part of an Iranian missile that had been intercepted.
Both his children were home at the time but were unharmed, he said. Like many Palestinians in East Jerusalem, he said, his family does not have access to fortified bomb shelters, making the attacks even more frightening.
“The rocket which landed on my home could just as easily have struck Al Aqsa, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, or the Western Wall,” he said. “Those places need to be protected. But unfortunately, there’s nowhere today that’s safe.”