day 13...

Iraq and Oman closed oil terminals on Thursday after two tankers were attacked and left burning off Iraq’s coast, as the International Energy Agency warned that the war in the Middle East had caused “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.”

Oil prices initially surged despite a coordinated effort by the United States and other major economies to calm markets by pledging on Wednesday to release 400 million barrels of oil from their emergency reserves.

Fighting has displaced up to 3.2 million people inside Iran, the United Nations refugee agency said on Thursday, as the human toll of the conflict rose. Almost 2,000 people have been killed since the start of the U.S.-Israeli assault, mostly in Iran. The Israeli military said that it had launched a new wave of strikes in the country, targeting government infrastructure.

The Iranian military said it had launched attacks targeting Israeli military bases and security services, according to Iranian state media. Iran has also said that it would not allow oil shipments that benefit the United States and its allies to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, which is normally a conduit for one-fifth of the world’s oil. President Trump said Wednesday that only Tehran’s “unconditional surrender” would end the war.

In Lebanon, workers swept bloodstained sand off the sidewalk along the waterfront in Beirut, the capital, after Israeli airstrikes killed at least seven people. The Israeli military expanded its sweeping evacuation order deeper into southern Lebanon on Thursday after Israel Katz, Israel’s defense minister, said that the country was preparing to broaden its military operations against Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group. He added that he had warned the Lebanese president that if Lebanon could not prevent Hezbollah from attacking, “we will take the territory and do it ourselves.”

Global oil supplies are set to plunge by 8 million barrels a day, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday in its monthly report, with traffic through the Strait plummeting to a trickle because of attacks on shipping and energy infrastructure.

Since the war began on Feb. 28, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a British maritime agency, has recorded at least 16 reports of attacks on ships operating in and around the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Gulf of Oman.

On Thursday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps claimed responsibility for attacking one of the two tankers off Iraq’s coast, a Marshall Islands-flagged ship. In a statement cited by Iranian state media, the Guards said the ship had “disobeyed and ignored” warnings.

The statement did not mention the other tanker. Iraqi officials said that they believed that Iran was responsible for the attacks on the two tankers, which killed one person. Both tankers were used by Iraq for its own oil transport and were hit while in a ship-to-ship transfer area, according to the country’s oil export authority.

The U.K.M.T.O. said that a third ship was struck by an unknown projectile near Dubai. Security concerns on Thursday also forced the closure of an oil export terminal in Oman. It was unclear who was responsible for the attacks.

Several Persian Gulf countries said they intercepted attacks. Qatar said that it had stopped a missile attack. Saudi Arabia said it had destroyed two drones that were heading toward the kingdom’s huge Shaybah oil field

Here’s what else we are covering:

• Death toll: The number of people who have died in Iran is unclear. Iran’s representative to the United Nations, Amir Saeed Iravani, told the Security Council on Wednesday that more than 1,348 civilians had been killed. Dozens have also died in Iranian drone and missile attacks on Gulf countries and Israel. In Lebanon, the Israeli bombardment has killed more than 600 people and displaced over 800,000, according to Lebanese officials.

• Naval mines: The U.S. military has attacked Iranian mine-laying vessels near the Strait of Hormuz. It is unclear whether Iran has deployed any mines in the strait. In the 1980s, Iranian mines damaged commercial ships in the Persian Gulf and nearly sank a U.S. Navy frigate. Read more ›

• War financing: Pentagon officials told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill that the estimated the cost of the war had exceeded $11.3 billion in the first six days, according to three people familiar with the briefing. The number omitted several aspects of the operation, so lawmakers expect the total to grow considerably. Read more ›

• Banks threatened: Major financial institutions, including Citi and HSBC, temporarily closed offices in the Persian Gulf after Iran said it would target U.S. and Israeli banks in the region. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps made the threat after an airstrike hit a building in Tehran linked to Bank Sepah, an institution founded in 1922 as Iran’s first modern domestic bank. Read more ›

• Deadly school strike: The United States was responsible for the strike on an Iranian school that killed 175 people, most of them children, based on outdated targeting information, according to the preliminary findings of a Pentagon investigation. Mr. Trump had suggested that Iran could be to blame. Read more ›

SOH closed till tatha begging antaa, asalina yuddam start ayinatte ithee

26 minutes ago, karna11 said:

SOH closed till tatha begging antaa, asalina yuddam start ayinatte ithee

modi ji should come and persuade and mediate antunnaru kada..

2 hours ago, karna11 said:

SOH closed till tatha begging antaa, asalina yuddam start ayinatte ithee

First of all this guy is seriously injured. Doubt if he is alive.

3 minutes ago, krishnaaa said:

First of all this guy is seriously injured. Doubt if he is alive.

he is alive, just shoulder injured.

Tatha market ni complete gaa MG chese daaka nidra poyettu ledu gaa... the real dump not started yet. Margin calls didnt get kicked in...

56 minutes ago, Hitman said:

he is alive, just shoulder injured.

Tatha market ni complete gaa MG chese daaka nidra poyettu ledu gaa... the real dump not started yet. Margin calls didnt get kicked in...

Link?

12 minutes ago, krishnaaa said:

Link?

https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/irans-new-supreme-leader-mojtaba-hurt-in-strike-that-killed-his-father-report/article70731605.ece

3 minutes ago, Hitman said:

https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/irans-new-supreme-leader-mojtaba-hurt-in-strike-that-killed-his-father-report/article70731605.ece

Must be seriously injured.

Not one video came out even after rumours of his death.

1 hour ago, krishnaaa said:

First of all this guy is seriously injured. Doubt if he is alive.

Looks like they have a succession in place....top leadership lepesinaka kuda inka active vundi irgc...so head ni lepesina peddaga origedi emi ledu ilanti situations lo

55 minutes ago, Android_Halwa said:

Looks like they have a succession in place....top leadership lepesinaka kuda inka active vundi irgc...so head ni lepesina peddaga origedi emi ledu ilanti situations lo

Its like Congress and Gandhi family.

Once that guy is taken out, they will become vulnerable.

1 hour ago, Android_Halwa said:

Looks like they have a succession in place....top leadership lepesinaka kuda inka active vundi irgc...so head ni lepesina peddaga origedi emi ledu ilanti situations lo

Supreme lekapothee mari violent gaa tarantula vunnaru gaa vellu DCD TYPE ANUKUNGAA

because the regime`sgoal is to maintain control over Iran. (driven by religious ideology). even the death of head (whoever) won`t stop them, clerical assembly will guide the army with whoever surviving. moreover reports say that the Iranian revolutionary guards functioning horizontally. The only goal is to save the regime not the people of Iran. (similar to china)

U.S. Central Command said Thursday a U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft, which military officials said was part of the American war on Iran, had crashed in Iraq.

In a statement, Central Command said that an incident involving two aircraft “occurred in friendly airspace,” and one went down, while the other landed safely. Rescue efforts were underway, the statement said. The KC-135 has a three-person crew.

Iran has begun laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf channel that carries 20 percent of the world’s oil, according to U.S. officials, a move that could exacerbate the disruptions to global shipping and further rattle the global economy.

The U.S. military said that while it had destroyed larger Iranian naval vessels, Iran began using smaller boats to lay mines on Thursday, according to a U.S. official briefed on the intelligence.

Earlier on Thursday, Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, had vowed to keep blocking the strait. Striking a defiant tone in his first public statement since succeeding his father, who was killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes on Feb. 28, he promised to avenge “the blood of the martyrs.”

Oil prices have surged despite pledges by the United States and other major economies to calm markets by releasing emergency reserves.

The Israeli military launched a new wave of strikes on central Beirut and Tehran on Thursday evening, sending thick plumes of smoke into the air a few hundred yards from the Lebanese government’s headquarters and setting off air-defense systems across the Iranian capital.

In a news conference on Thursday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who earlier urged the Iranian people to rise up against their government, appeared to scale back the potential for regime change.

“We are creating the optimal conditions for the overthrow of the regime, but I can’t say for certain that the Iranian people would topple it,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “A regime is toppled from within.”

He added that even if the regime is not toppled, Iran will be “much weaker.”

Israel’s heavy bombardment of Beirut, in an area near hip bars, high-end restaurants and high schools, crystallized fears that the war in Lebanon was expanding beyond the southern outskirts of the capital, where Hezbollah has long held sway. It also deepened the sense that corners of the city once considered comparatively safe were no longer off-limits.

For Lebanese displaced by Israel’s evacuation orders and relentless bombardment, the strikes in Beirut spread fear and uncertainty. “I don’t feel like there is a safe place for us to go anymore,” said Hussain Mansour, 32, standing by the site of a strike in the seaside community Ramlet al-Baida. “Where? Where should we go?”

Where ships have been struck since March 11

Source: United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Josh Holder/The New York Times

Here’s what else we are covering:

• Russia shipment: Russia has sent more than 13 metric tons of medicine to Iranian civilians on the orders of President Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations said on Thursday, in its first announcement of an aid shipment to Iran since the U.S.-Israeli strikes began. Moscow airlifted the aid in an IL-76 aircraft to Azerbaijan, where the medicine was handed over to Iranian officials for transport by land into Iran, the ministry said.

• Lebanon speech: Prime Minister Nawaf Salam gave a televised speech on Thursday evening, shortly after Israeli airstrikes rained on central Beirut. “We cannot, under any circumstances, accept that Lebanon once again becomes an open arena for the wars of others,” he said. It was a thinly veiled reference to the country’s history as a battleground in the widening confrontation between Hezbollah and its Iran-backed allies on one side, and Israel on the other.

• Death toll: Iran’s representative to the United Nations, Amir Saeed Iravani, told the Security Council on Wednesday that more than 1,348 civilians had been killed in the country. Dozens have also died in Iranian drone and missile attacks on Gulf countries and Israel. In Lebanon, the Israeli bombardment has killed more than 680 people and displaced over 800,000, according to Lebanese officials. Among the casualties, nearly 100 children have been killed and 200,000 of them displaced, the international charity War Child said on Thursday. That means that roughly one in 10 children in Lebanon was among the displaced, the charity said.

• Tanker attacks: The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran claimed responsibility for attacking one of the two tankers off Iraq’s coast, a Marshall Islands-flagged ship that Iraqi officials said was owned by an American company. In a statement cited by Iranian state media, the Guards said the ship had “disobeyed and ignored” warnings. Chris Wright, the U.S. energy secretary, told CNBC on Thursday that the U.S. Navy could begin escorting ships through the strait by month’s end.

day 14..

Iranians thronged the streets of Tehran on Friday for an annual anti-Israel rally despite Israeli warnings of more strikes in Iran’s capital city, as oil markets largely shrugged off the Trump administration’s efforts to avert an energy crisis stemming from the Middle East war.

Exchanges of fire by Israel; the United States; Iran; and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah; showed little sign of slowing, as the U.S. military’s Central Command confirmed the deaths of four American crew members in the crash of a refueling plane in western Iraq on Thursday night. The military said the crash was not a result of friendly or hostile fire.

The war in the Middle East has killed more than 2,000 people over the past two weeks, mostly in Iran and Lebanon, and displaced millions of others. Iran’s efforts to block the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which 20 percent of the world’s oil normally travels, have disrupted global energy supplies and rattled financial markets.

In Turkey, NATO air defenses intercepted a missile fired from Iran and entering Turkey’s airspace on Friday, the Turkish defense ministry said. It was the third such interception of an Iranian missile over Turkey in 10 days.

In Lebanon, the Israeli military escalated its attacks against Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia backed by Iran, carrying out strikes beyond the group’s traditional strongholds, including in parts of Beirut once considered comparatively safe.

Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, warned on Friday of attacks on government infrastructure used by Hezbollah, and said that overnight the Israeli military had struck a bridge in southern Lebanon that the militia used to transfer munitions over the Litani River. The bridge is a key transport link for civilians, including those trying to flee north because of Israeli strikes.

More than 800,000 people have fled their homes in Lebanon, fearing the war’s possible expansion.

Across the border, a missile attack in northern Israel on Friday damaged homes and injured dozens of people, Israel’s emergency medical service said. Hezbollah said that it had launched missiles toward northern Israel, near the border with Lebanon.

In the Persian Gulf, the authorities in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates said they were intercepting drones and missiles on Friday morning. Strikes on Tehran wounded aid workers with Iran’s Red Crescent Society. And an attack in Iraq killed a French soldier and injured several others, the French authorities said.

Here’s what else we are covering:

• U.S. jet crash: The U.S. military said that the crash of its refueling jet, a KC-135 aircraft, was under investigation. The deaths of four crew members, whom the military did not immediately identify, brought the total of American service members killed in the war to at least 11. The status of two other crew members was not immediately known. Read more ›

• Russian oil: Oil continued to trade at around $100 a barrel a day after President Trump’s latest attempt to calm markets. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the U.S. government had temporarily removed sanctions on Russian oil currently at sea to add oil to global markets. Read more ›

• Quds Day rally: Thousands of people were out in Tehran on Friday for a rally marking Quds Day, held annually by the Iranian government against Israel. People chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America,” and burned the Israeli flag. The rally was seen in part as an effort by loyalists of Iran’s clerical leadership to demonstrate their continued support.

• Death toll: More than 1,348 civilians in Iran have been killed since the start of the war, Iran’s representative to the United Nations told the Security Council on Wednesday, the latest figure the country has provided. In Lebanon, officials said that more than 700 people had been killed and over 1,500 others injured.

• Strait of Hormuz: U.S. officials said on Thursday that Iran had begun laying mines in the strait. Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, vowed earlier that day to keep blocking it.

• Israel: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel issued threats to Iran’s new supreme leader and to Hezbollah on Thursday when he took questions from reporters for the first time since the war began. But he appeared to acknowledge that Israeli attacks alone might not be enough to overthrow the Iranian regime.

13 hours ago, dasaribro said:

U.S. Central Command said Thursday a U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft, which military officials said was part of the American war on Iran, had crashed in Iraq.

In a statement, Central Command said that an incident involving two aircraft “occurred in friendly airspace,” and one went down, while the other landed safely. Rescue efforts were underway, the statement said. The KC-135 has a three-person crew.

Iran has begun laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf channel that carries 20 percent of the world’s oil, according to U.S. officials, a move that could exacerbate the disruptions to global shipping and further rattle the global economy.

The U.S. military said that while it had destroyed larger Iranian naval vessels, Iran began using smaller boats to lay mines on Thursday, according to a U.S. official briefed on the intelligence.

Earlier on Thursday, Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, had vowed to keep blocking the strait. Striking a defiant tone in his first public statement since succeeding his father, who was killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes on Feb. 28, he promised to avenge “the blood of the martyrs.”

Oil prices have surged despite pledges by the United States and other major economies to calm markets by releasing emergency reserves.

The Israeli military launched a new wave of strikes on central Beirut and Tehran on Thursday evening, sending thick plumes of smoke into the air a few hundred yards from the Lebanese government’s headquarters and setting off air-defense systems across the Iranian capital.

In a news conference on Thursday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who earlier urged the Iranian people to rise up against their government, appeared to scale back the potential for regime change.

“We are creating the optimal conditions for the overthrow of the regime, but I can’t say for certain that the Iranian people would topple it,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “A regime is toppled from within.”

He added that even if the regime is not toppled, Iran will be “much weaker.”

Israel’s heavy bombardment of Beirut, in an area near hip bars, high-end restaurants and high schools, crystallized fears that the war in Lebanon was expanding beyond the southern outskirts of the capital, where Hezbollah has long held sway. It also deepened the sense that corners of the city once considered comparatively safe were no longer off-limits.

For Lebanese displaced by Israel’s evacuation orders and relentless bombardment, the strikes in Beirut spread fear and uncertainty. “I don’t feel like there is a safe place for us to go anymore,” said Hussain Mansour, 32, standing by the site of a strike in the seaside community Ramlet al-Baida. “Where? Where should we go?”

Where ships have been struck since March 11

Source: United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Josh Holder/The New York Times

Here’s what else we are covering:

• Russia shipment: Russia has sent more than 13 metric tons of medicine to Iranian civilians on the orders of President Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations said on Thursday, in its first announcement of an aid shipment to Iran since the U.S.-Israeli strikes began. Moscow airlifted the aid in an IL-76 aircraft to Azerbaijan, where the medicine was handed over to Iranian officials for transport by land into Iran, the ministry said.

• Lebanon speech: Prime Minister Nawaf Salam gave a televised speech on Thursday evening, shortly after Israeli airstrikes rained on central Beirut. “We cannot, under any circumstances, accept that Lebanon once again becomes an open arena for the wars of others,” he said. It was a thinly veiled reference to the country’s history as a battleground in the widening confrontation between Hezbollah and its Iran-backed allies on one side, and Israel on the other.

• Death toll: Iran’s representative to the United Nations, Amir Saeed Iravani, told the Security Council on Wednesday that more than 1,348 civilians had been killed in the country. Dozens have also died in Iranian drone and missile attacks on Gulf countries and Israel. In Lebanon, the Israeli bombardment has killed more than 680 people and displaced over 800,000, according to Lebanese officials. Among the casualties, nearly 100 children have been killed and 200,000 of them displaced, the international charity War Child said on Thursday. That means that roughly one in 10 children in Lebanon was among the displaced, the charity said.

• Tanker attacks: The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran claimed responsibility for attacking one of the two tankers off Iraq’s coast, a Marshall Islands-flagged ship that Iraqi officials said was owned by an American company. In a statement cited by Iranian state media, the Guards said the ship had “disobeyed and ignored” warnings. Chris Wright, the U.S. energy secretary, told CNBC on Thursday that the U.S. Navy could begin escorting ships through the strait by month’s end.

friendly fire kadantane!!