Air defences intercepted two drones near Dubai airport in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday, injuring four, the Dubai government said on X. Two Ghanaian nationals and one Bangladeshi national sustained minor injuries while an Indian national sustained moderate ones. Air traffic is operating as normal.
Global oil markets have recorded some of the biggest price swings in history this week after the US-Israeli war with Iran throttled the flow of Middle Eastern crude through the strait of Hormuz. The narrow waterway south of Iran is one of the world’s most important trade arteries, through which a fifth of global oil and seaborne gas is shipped from production facilities and refineries in the Gulf to buyers around the world. The strait carries just over 20m barrels of oil a day, making it the busiest oil route after the strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia. It is also the most important trade route for cargoes of liquified natural gas (LNG), shipped on super-chilled tankers. But unlike the Malacca corridor – which carries roughly 23.2m barrels a day to buyers in China, Japan and South Korea – the Hormuz strait is far more difficult to circumvent, making it the biggest chokepoint in the global energy system. The waterway lies below Iran and above Oman to the south, tapering to just 21 miles wide at its narrowest point. It is through this passage that crude and petroleum products from the refineries and production facilities of the world’s biggest petrostates need to pass to reach their global market. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Gulf producers have built pipelines that are able to bypass the strait, but these routes can carry only a fraction of the region’s export capacity. Iran has weaponised its geography in retaliation to US-Israeli strikes. Hundreds of tankers hoping to cross the strait have come to a halt after the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps threatened to “set ablaze” any vessel using the trade route, effectively deterring all but the most reckless. The stoppage has sent fossil fuel prices soaring, and fears over supplies have been compounded by strikes against key oil and gas infrastructure in the region that threaten to further disrupt supply even if tankers are able to resume their routes through the strait. At least five energy sites in and around Tehran were hit by airstrikes, prompting accounts of “apocalyptic” scenes in the Iranian capital. Major oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and Qatar have also been affected. Meanwhile, oil storage facilities in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are reaching their limits, meaning large oilfields may need to be shut down if crude cannot be exported via the strait of Hormuz to the global market. Qatar’s energy minister has predicted that if the disruption to Hormuz continues all Gulf energy exporters will have to shut down production within weeks – delaying any restart if the strait reopens – and oil could rise to $150 a barrel. The single largest buyer of crude flowing through the strait is China, which imported at least 5.4m barrels of crude a day on tankers traversing the channel last year, according to Vortexa. These included record volumes of sanctioned Iranian crude, which averaged 1.38m barrels a day last year. Although China is the most exposed to the Gulf energy crisis, it is also the most prepared. In addition to record Iranian imports, market observers believe it imported record volumes of Venezuelan crude before the US swoop on the South American country in January. Overall, China has taken advantage of weak oil prices over recent years to quietly amass record high levels of crude stocks, which are estimated to exceed 1.2bn barrels in its onshore crude stockpiles. This is the equivalent of about three to four months of reserves. While China is also the biggest importer of Gulf gas cargoes, it relies on the region for less than a third of its total gas demand. Its other gas sources include Russia and Australia. The countries most reliant on the Middle East for gas imports include Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, the world’s fastest growing major economy. The White House agreed last week to temporarily waive its sanctions to allow India to buy Russian oil stranded at sea. In Bangladesh and Pakistan ministers have clamped down on the countries’ electricity and fuel use by shutting universities and preparing remote-work policies. Leaders of G7 nations met on Monday to discuss plans to reverse the sharp rise in global energy prices after the international benchmark Brent crude, climbed by almost a third to highs of $119.50 a barrel. It was the first time market prices have soared above the key psychological $100 threshold since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, by the evening prices were tumbling again after Donald Trump suggested the US-Israel war on Iran could end “very soon”, and by Wednesday they had fallen to about $90 a barrel.
Just south of Santiago, the tiny rural town of Paine is a quiet grid of painted abode facades, shaded squares and shuttered shop fronts as the summer holidays draw to a close. But the white-knuckle fear of crime that propelled its most famous son, José Antonio Kast, to a resounding victory in December’s presidential election is as present in sleepy Paine as it is the length of Chile. “We have so much crime here – robberies, guns, drugs, you name it,” said María Elena Balcázar at a table in her roadside cafe opposite the Parroquia Santa María Virgen de Paine, the church where the Kast family would attend mass. “Past eight o’clock nobody goes out anymore, everyone is scared,” she said. “People voted for José Antonio Kast because he promised strong, drastic changes.” Kast, 60, whose career on the most extreme rightwing fringes of Chilean politics has often courted controversy, was elected president at the third attempt when he won 58% of the vote. Chileans voted for iron-fisted solutions to increased violence and illegal immigration – the tenets of Kast’s campaign which he repeated time and again to baying crowds on nationwide tours. Violent crime has ticked up in Chile over the last few years with the arrival of international gangs, part of a wave of illegal migration across the country’s long and porous borders. But the perception of the problem has far outstripped reality. Although three times what it was in 2015, Chile’s murder rate of six homicides per 100,000 people in 2023 places it nowhere near the most dangerous countries in Latin America, let alone the world. Ecuador recorded 46 murders per 100,000 people in 2023, Haiti 41 and Mexico and Colombia 25. In Latin America, only Argentina and Bolivia had lower murder rates than Chile. Yet a 2024 Gallup security report ranked Chile sixth out of 144 countries worldwide where people most fear walking in their neighbourhood at night. Rolling news replaying footage of violent assaults has contributed to the perception that the country has become ungovernably violent under the outgoing leftist president Gabriel Boric, who beat Kast in 2021. On the night of December’s runoff vote, Kast announced that he would install an emergency government to wrest back public order. But that night and throughout the campaign he avoided all mention of the hardline, ultra-conservative moral code on which he has built his political career. Kast has publicly supported Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, under which more than 3,200 people were murdered and 1,469 forcibly disappeared. Thousands more were detained, tortured or forced into exile. While running for the presidency in 2021, Kast said that the former dictator, who died in 2006 without ever facing justice, would have supported his candidacy. He used his three terms in congress to oppose abortion and the morning after pill, and to promote traditional family values. “They simply figured out that, in order to win the presidency, [Kast’s team] needed to move away from [Boric’s] agenda and say that their priorities are first, public safety, and second, economic growth,” said Claudio Fuentes, a political scientist at Diego Portales University in Santiago. Kast was born in Santiago on 18 January 1966, the youngest of the German immigrants Michael Kast and Olga Rist’s 10 children. His father was a member of the Nazi party, and during the second world war was conscripted into the Wehrmacht where he rose to lieutenant, fighting on the eastern front and in Italy, France and Crimea. The couple were devotees of the hardline Catholic Schoenstatt movement and instilled a strict work ethic in their children, opening a meat processing factory in Paine and a Bavarian restaurant on the dusty verge of the pan-American highway. It has grown into a successful nationwide chain of more than 50 restaurants. Balcázar’s father worked at the factory and spoke fondly of Michael Kast. She remembers him handing out sandwiches to children in the square. The family has long been influential in Chile’s rightwing politics. Miguel Kast, José Antonio’s brother, was a key ideologue of the Pinochet regime as one of the “Chicago Boys”, a group of economists that imposed a neoliberal model during the dictatorship. José Antonio Kast studied law at the Universidad Católica, where he became involved in student politics under the watchful gaze of Jaime Guzmán, a fiercely conservative lawyer and architect of the constitution devised under Pinochet. A youthful Kast appeared in campaign adverts espousing the continuation of the dictatorship before a pivotal 1988 plebiscite. He worked briefly as a lawyer upon graduating, but gravitated toward politics. He became a councillor for the conservative Independent Democratic Union party (UDI) in 1996 before being elected to congress in 2002 and serving three consecutive terms. “Kast has always been on the most conservative fringe of Chilean politics in cultural and neoliberal economic terms,” said Felipe González Mac-Conell, a historian who co-authored a book about the president and Chilean far right. “He always maintained his beliefs and never wavered. He hasn’t changed his way of thinking nor have any of those around him, who have thought the same as him all along.” After 20 years in the party and two unsuccessful leadership bids, Kast resigned from the UDI saying that it had strayed too far from its founding principles as it modernised – and liberalised – with Chilean society. He ran for the presidency for the first time as an independent in 2017, winning 8% of the vote, before founding the Republican party in 2019 on the basis of the “defence of human life since conception,” family values and the market economy. He has already begun shaping Chile’s future. He drew criticism over the weekend for attending the gaudy launch of Donald Trump’s Shield of the Americas security alliance. He spoke at a summit of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Hungary last year, and met El Salvador’s security minister during the country’s heavy-handed crackdown on gangs. Back on the outskirts of Paine beside a noisy highway is a memorial to the 70 men who were disappeared by the Pinochet regime – more than in any other municipality in Chile. “Truth and justice are on the line,” said Flor Lazo, whose father and two brothers were kidnapped from their home in the fraught days after Pinochet’s 1973 coup. No trace of them has ever been found. “We are on a war footing. Let me be clear. We will be watching closely everything the new president does. We will take our fight to La Moneda [presidential palace] if necessary.”
Good morning. For the last few years artificial intelligence has been heralded as the technology that will transform economies. Governments have promised billions in investment, datacentres and supercomputers, and a wave of new jobs as AI is “mainlined” into the economy. But what happens when the numbers behind those promises are examined more closely? That question sits at the centre of a series of recent investigations by the Guardian. The findings were remarkable – not least that the location for a much-trumpeted new supercomputer intended be up and running by year’s end to help fire up the British economy remains a scaffolding yard. For today’s newsletter I spoke to Aisha Down, a Guardian reporter covering artificial intelligence, about the puzzling aspects of recent deals and announcements in the UK, and what happens when governments eager for growth appear to embrace AI promises faster than they can be verified. But first, the headlines. Five big stories Middle East crisis | Tehran residents say the Iranian capital has endured what they described as its worst night of aerial bombardment, as the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, followed Donald Trump’s suggestion on Monday the war could soon be over with a warning of more strikes to come. Environment | Climate breakdown is shrinking the amount of time that people can safely go about their lives, according to a study that shows a third of the world’s population now resides in areas where heat severely limits activity. Labour | Plans to curtail the number of jury trials in England and Wales have been described as “unpopular, untested and poorly evidenced” by thousands of lawyers who have written to the prime minister. UK economy | UK inflation could end the year higher than previously expected at 3% because of the US-Israel war in Iran, the government’s economics watchdog has warned. Travel | Tube drivers in London are to strike across 12 days in the spring in a row over a four-day working week, the RMT has announced. In depth: ‘A $100bn deal between two of the biggest companies in the world just sort of disappeared’ “What seems to have happened is that the reality has been spun – by a government desperate for growth, and by tech companies with a very strong incentive to maximise AI hype,” Aisha tells me. She says the reporting began with a simple idea: to check the details behind a wave of enormous AI investment announcements. “Something [my colleague] Dan Milmo and I on the tech desk had been trying to do towards the end of last year was basically an audit,” she tells me. “2025 was the year of enormous AI deals in the UK, but also all over the world. Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang was going around announcing huge AI investments in places like Saudi Arabia and South Korea.” But things weren’t as straightforward as one might imagine from all the shiny press releases. “We started trying to map out all the deals,” she says – and they began to notice what Aisha describes as an “eerie” pattern. *** The $100bn deal that vanished One moment in particular made Aisha pause. Earlier this year there had been enormous excitement about a proposed $100bn investment from Nvidia into OpenAI – a deal that would have seen Nvidia provide funding that OpenAI would largely use to buy Nvidia’s own chips. Then, almost overnight, it appeared to evaporate. “A $100bn deal between two of the biggest companies in the world just sort of disappeared,” Aisha says. “And markets didn’t really move.” That raised questions. Financial markets have been known to wobble over far smaller developments – for example, a recent viral Substack post describing a dystopian future scenario with AI as “a feedback loop with no brake” appeared to have caused stock value losses for Uber, American Express, Mastercard and DoorDash, because it specifically mentioned them. Yet when one of the biggest deals underpinning the AI boom appeared to melt away, the reaction was muted. “I remember wandering around the newsroom probably annoying the editors,” she laughs. “I kept looking at these deals and saying: ‘What money?’” That moment pushed her and colleagues to start examining the claims behind some of the biggest announcements more closely. *** The supercomputer that wasn’t As the reporting narrowed, two companies kept appearing in the UK government’s AI plans: the datacentre firms CoreWeave and Nscale, both backed by Nvidia and both associated with major promised investments in Britain’s AI infrastructure. One project in particular caught Aisha’s attention: a planned “sovereign AI” supercomputer site in Loughton, on the outskirts of north London. When she began making calls about the project, some of the answers raised eyebrows. Did the site have power connections? Had construction actually begun? So she went to see it. “I honestly did not expect what we found,” she says. Instead of a vast construction site preparing to host one of the country’s most powerful computing centres, the location (pictured above) appeared to still be operating as a scaffolding yard. “There were trucks going in and out stacked with metal poles,” she says. “We were standing there thinking: this is the right site? This is where the supercomputer is supposed to be?” The contrast between the futuristic artist’s impressions (pictured top) that had accompanied the announcement and the reality on the ground was striking. The government and Nscale say this supercomputer is supposed to be up by the end of this year. And while Nscale stated more than a year ago that it had already bought the site, land records seem to show that it is not registered as the owner. An Nscale spokesperson said: “As a UK-headquarted company, we remain committed to the UK investment we announced – with the Loughton project in support of Microsoft progressing as we envisaged.” *** Paper promises One concern raised by Aisha’s reporting is that some of the grander claims about AI investment may not translate into the economic transformation governments hope for. Predictions about the technology’s impact vary widely. A recent report by the National Foundation for Educational Research suggested that up to 3m lower-skilled jobs in the UK could disappear by 2035 because of automation and AI, even as new roles emerge elsewhere. Nscale and CoreWeave say much of their investment will come in the form of Nvidia chips installed in UK datacentres and rented to customers. In practice, that could mean Nscale’s $2.5bn “investment” largely involves buying chips made in Taiwan by a US company and leasing them to companies from a UK facility – rather than new money flowing into the economy. And the infrastructure projects meant to power that AI boom may themselves create far fewer jobs than advertised. “Datacentres do not, in reality, create hundreds of long-term jobs,” Aisha says. “They create some security jobs, some maintenance jobs – tens at most, usually, not hundreds.” The companies involved say their announcements accurately reflect their plans and deny that the investments are misleading. They argue that deploying computing equipment in existing facilities and phasing construction are common practices in the fast-moving AI industry. The UK government has also rejected suggestions that its AI strategy rests on exaggerated claims, saying datacentres are essential infrastructure for the country’s economic future. Nevertheless some of apparent gaps are startling. In January the government said CoreWeave and DataVita would build a Lanarkshire “AI growth zone” powered by up to 1GW of private renewable energy – about the output of a nuclear reactor. It is not clear whether plans exist for energy infrastructure on that scale. CoreWeave said it was confident there is sufficient power to support the investment, but DataVita, who is responsible for power delivery, did not respond to comment. *** ‘How it started’ v ‘how it’s going’ When I ask Aisha to boil the story down to its essentials, she explains it using the language of social media memes. “How it started: billions of pounds of investment, new jobs, datacentres springing up all over the UK, AI being mainlined into the veins of the economy, everything transformed, productivity unlocked, Labour’s growth problem solved. “How it’s actually going: the money is only money in the loosest possible sense. In many cases it really seems to mean relocating hardware from one place to another, plus some associated electricity and operational costs. “That is not investment in the way most people would understand the word.” And as Aisha points out, the UK is far from alone. Governments around the world are competing to attract AI infrastructure and investment – sometimes with similarly ambitious promises attached. In the end, what was sold as billions pouring into Britain’s AI economy has started to look more like imported chips in borrowed buildings – and a government merrily parroting the press releases of big AI companies, riding on the back of those good vibes, without asking too many difficult questions along the way. What else we’ve been reading Michael Hann interviews Jowe Head about the “serious fun” of being in the very obscure but hugely influential diy-band Swell Maps. Martin Marina Hyde on the tone deaf escapades of Kai Trump, the US president’s granddaughter who went viral this week for her video touring a luxury supermarket, is, well, classic Marina Hyde. Charlie Lindlar, newsletters team Have a nostalgic wander through some of the hits and misses of Apple’s product line over the years with this Chris Stokel-Walker list. Oh, iPod, I miss you. Martin For Moving the Goalposts, our women’s football newsletter (sign up here!), Osasu Obayiuwana covers the outrage over the postponement of the Women’s African Cup of Nations. As one player posted: “It’s actually embarrassing at this point.” Charlie The pope has come out against priests using artificial intelligence to write their sermons, but in this opinion piece Margaret Sullivan suggests that journalists may have to learn to live with it. Martin Sport Football | Goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky was substituted early in the first half of Tottenham’s humiliating 5-2 defeat at the hands of Atlético Madrid. Meanwhile, Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal equalised from the penalty spot after Harvey Barnes had given Newcastle the lead to make it 1-1 in a hard-fought first leg. Mario Lemina’s early goal for Galatasaray edged them to a 1-0 victory at home to Liverpool in the first leg of their Champions League last 16 tie. Rugby union | Steve Borthwick has recalled Ollie Chessum to his beleaguered side for their final Six Nations match against France but otherwise stuck by the same underfire players who suffered defeat against Italy. Football | Joey Barton is due to appear in court charged with attacking a man near a golf club in Liverpool. The former footballer was arrested after the incident outside Huyton and Prescot golf club at 9pm on Sunday. The front pages “‘The last stop before hell’: Tehran residents say attacks intensifying,” is the splash on the Guardian today. “US bombers take off from Britain for attack on Iran,” says the Times. “American bombers take off from UK RAF base as Trump vows biggest Iran blitz,” has the i. “Ban pro-Iran hate march,” is the lead story at the Daily Mail. “Face of UK meets hate with dates,” says the Metro. “Time to stop ‘cruel’ state pension tax grab,” is the splash at the Express. “PM’s leaked ‘assault on devolution’”, writes the National. “Joey Barton held over attack at golf club,” has the Star. “Barton ‘victim blinded’”, says the Sun. Today in Focus Should we be boycotting ChatGPT? Historian Rutger Bregman argues that consumers should boycott OpenAI’s ChatGPT after the company’s deal with the Pentagon. “A lot of people don’t know that their friendly chatbot, ChatGPT, has embedded itself into the authoritarian infrastructure of the Trump administration,” Bregman tells Helen Pidd. Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad Candombe, Uruguay’s Afro-descendent music, was once reviled, marginalised and even banned. But now it is experiencing a peak in popularity. The music, which is primarily defined by the use of three drums – piano, chico and repique – emerged from the more than 200,000 enslaved Africans sent to Uruguay during 250 years of slavery, most of them from central Africa. Gradually it gained broader acceptance within Uruguayan society, with candombe groups eventually spreading to every region of the country, and in 2009 it was recognised by Unesco as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity. Now its rhythmic sounds draw thousands to public squares and carnival parades. The rhythm “is a trance, a spiritual tool”, says Jorge Drexlerl, one of Uruguay’s biggest singers. “In a world in which polarisation is only getting worse, candombe has the ability to build bridges between people”. Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply
Kharg Island – through which 90% of Iran’s oil exports flow – is arguably the country’s most sensitive economic target but the export terminal has so far remained untouched throughout the US-Israel bombing campaign. Experts say bombing or capturing the site with US forces would be likely to cause a sustained increase to already surging oil prices, as it would amount to taking the entirety of Iran’s daily crude exports offline. “We may see the $120 a barrel price we saw on Monday heading to the $150 if Kharg were attacked,” said Neil Quilliam, with the Chatham House thinktank. “It’s too vital for global energy markets”. Although the US has struck 5,000 targets in and around Iran, it has so far refrained from bombing the country’s oil infrastructure – though oil prices remain nearly $20 per barrel higher because the fear of Iranian retaliation has in effect closed the strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic. Israel’s air force did strike two oil refineries and two depots on Saturday, plunging Tehran into what some residents described as an “apocalyptic” darkness as thick black smoke descended over the capital. But there have been no attacks since. Kharg, a five-mile-long coral island in the Persian Gulf 27 miles from the mainland, is where pipelines from Iran’s oilfields in the centre and the west of the country terminate. Established by a US oil conglomerate, Amoco, it was seized by Iran during the 1979 revolution. While most of Iran’s coastline is silty and too shallow for very large crude tankers used by the oil industry, Kharg is sufficiently close to deep waters. Satellite imagery reveals vast loading jetties emerging from its eastern shore. Typically, between 1.3m and 1.6m barrels of oil a day pass through Kharg, though Iran increased volumes to 3m a day in mid-February, according to the investment bank JP Morgan, in anticipation of a US-led attack. A further 18m barrels are stored on Kharg as a backup, the bank added. Media reports have hinted at White House interest, including a brief reference in an Axios report on Saturday that officials had considered “seizing Kharg”. The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has not ruled out attacking Iran with ground forces, although there are not large numbers of US troops in the region. Michael Rubin, a senior Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq in the George W Bush administration, said last week he had discussed the idea with White House officials, arguing it could be a way to cripple the Iranian regime economically. “If they can’t sell their own oil, they can’t make payroll,” he said. Before the latest US-Israel offensive, most of Iran’s crude oil from Kharg was exported to China. But the interconnected nature of the market means a permanent loss in export supply would affect prices globally, at a time when a further 3.5m barrels a day, mostly from Iraq, are also offline because of the closure of Hormuz. Destroying Kharg or damaging the export site “runs the risk of causing an economy-shaping increase in oil price that would not drop rapidly”, argues Lynette Nusbacher, a former British army intelligence officer. Israel did not attack it in last summer’s 12-day war, and its complex infrastructure could take years to repair. There is also a longer-term political argument. “Kharg Island is sufficiently important to the Iranian economy that destroying its facilities would abandon any pretence of fighting a war to create a brighter future for Iran,” Nusbacher argues, because it would deny a successor regime vital oil income. An effort to seize the island, given its size, would be likely to require a sizeable and sustained operation, greater than a typical special forces incursion. Though a US seizure would in theory give the White House leverage over Tehran, Quilliam argued it was very likely that such an effort would be self-defeating. “If the US were to seize it, then you are separating the Iranian oil industry. Iran would have production but couldn’t export, while the US wouldn’t be able to produce. That would set markets in a tailspin; that’s a real standoff,” the analyst said.
Iranian-backed militias around the Middle East are continuing attacks against Israel, the US and their allies in retaliation for the US-Israeli offensive against Tehran, but have so far held back from all-out confrontation, analysts and regional officials say. The relative restraint suggests that Tehran sees such forces as a strategic reserve to be deployed if the 12-day war continues to intensify – though it may also be a sign that Iranian command and control systems are breaking down. Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Islamist militant movement which has close links to Iran, joined the conflict early, launching missile and drone attacks at Israel after the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. On Tuesday, Shia militias in Iraq attacked a US diplomatic facility in Baghdad, the latest in a string of such strikes, and have previously launched long-range attacks at Israeli and US bases in Jordan. But so far, the Yemen-based Houthis, which are also part of Iran’s once-potent coalition of militant militias across the Middle East known as the “axis of resistance”, have not reopened hostilities with the US or joined Tehran’s retaliatory attacks on Israel or Gulf neighbours or shipping – though they warned last week that their “fingers are on the trigger”. With the closure of the strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for global oil supplies, the Red Sea shipping lanes have become even more vital. No attacks in the Red Sea have been reported since the Iran war began, but threats persist, the Joint Maritime Information Center, a naval advisory service, said on Sunday. Observers say the imminent passage of a US aircraft carrier battle group through the narrow Bab el-Mandeb strait at the eastern end of the Red Sea would be a key moment that would test the powerfully armed movement’s intentions. “That is going to be a really important test … The Houthis have mines, drones, artillery, a whole range of missiles. The axis of resistance will never get a better chance to set a US aircraft carrier on fire,” said Michael Knights, a regional expert at Horizon Engage, a strategic advisory – based in New York. The Houthis have received extensive financial, military and other support from Tehran over decades, and described the appointment on Monday of Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader of Iran as “a new victory for the Islamic Revolution”. However, experts say the Houthis, though they still possess an arsenal of powerful long-range missiles, may decide against active involvement in the current conflict and would not simply follow orders from Tehran. “It is difficult to predict, but I don’t think they will strike shipping in the Red Sea purely based on solidarity with Iran … They are weighing domestic considerations,” said Allison Minor, of the Atlantic Council, a thinktank based in Washington DC. “Getting involved in the Iran war is a potential scenario, but would not yield the same domestic and international benefits for the Houthis that attacking Israel and Red Sea shipping during the Gaza war did, and …. could pose greater risks.” Last week, Phillip Smyth, a US-based independent analyst of Iran’s allies and proxies, said Tehran may be holding the Houthis “in reserve”, but that the movement’s leaders could also be “hedging their bets in case the Iranian regime collapses”. In Iraq, which is emerging as a key new theatre in the conflict, violence has continued to flare. One Iranian-backed armed group said an airstrike on Tuesday killed four of its fighters at a base in northern Iraq in the latest of a series of such attacks, most likely carried out by either the US or Israel. The strike comes after almost daily attacks by pro-Iranian militia forces against a US base in Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region, and on positions of potential allies among local Kurdish factions. Since the beginning of the war 12 days ago, there have been unconfirmed reports of US and Israeli special forces operating against pro-Iranian Shia militia groups in Iraq’s western desert. In one clash with what are thought to have been Israeli special forces, Iraqi government troops suffered casualties, prompting a protest from Baghdad. There have also been multiple air strikes against militia bases in the west and south of Iraq. Jordan has faced Iranian attacks. According to the Jordanian military, Iran targeted the kingdom with 60 missiles and 59 drones during the first week of the conflict. Most were intercepted. However, missiles destroyed a valuable US radar deployed to the Muwaffaq Salti airbase, where dozens of US warplanes were stationed, including F-35 stealth fighters and key electronic warfare aircraft. In Iraq, drone and rocket attacks launched by pro-Iranian militia have also repeatedly targeted Baghdad international airport, which houses a military base and a US diplomatic facility, as well as oilfields and facilities. On Monday, two drones were downed nearby, a security source said. The Iraq-based militia fighters have posted videos boasting of their efforts to strike US and Israeli targets in the region, though their ability and will to inflict serious harm is doubted by some observers. “They could be doing more than they are doing now,” said one regional security official. “The [weapons] they have are not the best … and they are clearly worried about getting hit hard if they do cause serious harm, so that’s going to limit what they can or want to do.” Iraq has been a proxy battleground between the US, its allies and Iran since the 2003 US-led invasion, but the country’s current leaders have sought to avoid being drawn into this new conflict. The pro-Iranian militia fighters are recruited among Iraq’s majority Shia community, and follow orders from senior officers from Iran’s Quds Force, an elite unit within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Two of the more militant militias, Kataeb Imam Ali and Kataib Hezbollah, have been repeatedly targeted by US forces in recent days. The number of casualties in the strikes and counterstrikes in Iraq is unclear, but between 20 and 30 fighters from militant groups are thought to have been killed, as well as about 20 civilians in Kurdistan, local NGOs said. The Houthis began launching missiles at Israel and striking Red Sea shipping, in what they said was solidarity with Palestinians, after the Israeli offensive into Gaza that was triggered by the Hamas surprise attack in October 2023. The attacks led to several rounds of Israeli bombing of the Houthis and a concentrated US offensive last year which ended in an uneasy ceasefire deal. Analysts said a further scenario that could unfold now was an attack by the Houthis on Saudi Arabia. Their attack on oil infrastructure in March 2022 highlighted the kingdom’s political and economic vulnerabilities.
It has been almost a decade since the sleepy South Korean village of Seongju was transformed overnight into a key location in the country’s ability to counter an attack from North Korea. Early on a spring morning, camouflaged trucks carrying the US-made terminal high-altitude area defense (THAAD) missile-defence system rolled into Seongju, as the country’s government ignored protests from locals who said the deployment would make them a target for Pyongyang’s ballistic missiles. The conservative government in Seoul, backed by Washington, insisted that Thaad was the most effective way to locate and destroy North Korean missiles before they threatened the South and the 28,500 US troops stationed there. The deployment also angered China and Russia, which said Thaad’s powerful radar could compromise their security. But nine years on, the US has reportedly started moving parts of the system, along with other military hardware, out of South Korea for deployment in its war against Iran. US media has reported that the Pentagon is moving parts of a Thaad system to the Middle East, citing two officials. The move, reported this week, has triggered doubts over Donald Trump’s security commitment to South Korea – the US’s most important east Asian ally along with Japan – and warnings that the nuclear-armed North could seek to ramp up pressure on its neighbour. Why, critics are asking, did South Korea invest so much political capital in a defence system that could one day be removed? South Korea’s liberal president, Lee Jae Myung, sought to reassure the public that the country was able to deter threats from the North, even if the US redeployed weapons and other military assets to the Middle East. Noting that Seoul had opposed the redeployment of US artillery batteries and air-defence units, Lee told a cabinet meeting: “If asked whether that would seriously hinder our deterrence strategy against North Korea, I can say with certainty that it would not.” He added that South Korea’s defence budget is among the highest in the world and is estimated to be 1.4 times greater than North Korean gross domestic product. The South’s foreign minister, Cho Hyun said on Friday that US and South Korean militaries were also discussing the possible redeployment of some US Patriot missile defence systems to the Middle East. South Korean media carried unconfirmed reports that some missile batteries were likely to be redeployed to US bases in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. “For operational security reasons we do not comment on the movement of specific military capabilities or assets,” an officials from United States Forces Korea told the Yonhap news agency. Even if Lee is right to play down the security risk to South Korea, the weakening of US defences there have raised concerns that the war with Iran signals a downgrading in Trump’s commitment to North-east Asia, where North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme and the Taiwan Strait are potential flashpoints. “There is a risk that North Korea could miscalculate the relocation of some of these weapons as a pretext for low-level provocations to test the allies’ defence posture,” said Choi Gi-il, a military studies professor at Sangji University. Japan, too, is having to adapt to the US’s hasty redeployment of military hardware to the Middle East – a move that lends weight to criticism that Trump went into the Iran war without a clear plan, leaving American forces in danger of being sucked into a prolonged conflict. Japan hosts about 50,000 US troops, more than half of them on the southern island of Okinawa. Two US guided-missile destroyers based in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo, are currently deployed in the Arabian Sea, according to a report by the US Naval Institute. The head of Japan’s main opposition party has raised concerns about reports that the US was poised to send vessels based in Japan to the Middle East. “Japan has not permitted the stationing of US forces so they can sortie from those bases to fire missiles towards the Middle East,” Junya Ogawa told MPs this week. The JoongAng Daily, a conservative South Korean newspaper, said any reduction in the country’s ability to defend itself “inevitably raises concerns”. “The [South Korean] government should work to ensure that any redeployed assets return promptly once their missions end, minimising potential gaps in deterrence against North Korea. Efforts to strengthen Korea’s own defence capabilities should also accelerate.”
The US military said it attacked and destroyed 16 Iranian mine-laying vessels near the strait of Hormuz amid reports that Iran has begun laying explosive devices in the strategically vital waterway. Citing intelligence sources, CNN on Tuesday reported that Iran has laid a few dozen mines in the strait in recent days and has the capability to sow hundreds more. About one-fifth of the world’s oil passes through the strait, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said earlier this week it will not allow even “one litre of oil” to leave the region if US-Israeli attacks continue. On Tuesday, Donald Trump said in a post on Truth Social that “if Iran has put out any mines in the Hormuz Strait, and we have no reports of them doing so, we want them removed, IMMEDIATELY!” Less than two hours later, the US military released unclassified footage of its attacks on mine-laying vessels. Oil shipments from the Middle East have been blocked from passing through the narrow waterway since the US-Israeli strikes on Iran 11 days ago, causing oil prices to soar and wreaking havoc on global markets. The acute sensitivity of the oil markets to news about the strait was underlined on Tuesday afternoon when a swiftly deleted social media post from the US energy secretary caused wild market fluctuations. Raising hopes that the strait of Hormuz was back open for activity, Chris Wright posted on X: “The U.S. Navy successfully escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz to ensure oil remains flowing to global markets.” In response, benchmark US crude futures plunged by up to 19%, and an exchange-traded fund linked to oil futures had $84m of its market capitalisation wiped out, the Wall Street Journal reported. But the post was quickly taken down, and Trump administration officials denied Wright’s claim, clarifying no such expedition had taken place. An energy department spokesperson said Wright’s post had been “incorrectly captioned” by agency staff. Commenting on Wright’s post, a spokesperson for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards denied that an oil ship had been escorted. “Any movement of the US fleet and its allies will be stopped by our missiles and drones,” Ali Mohammad Naini said in comments carried by Iranian state media. At a defence department briefing, the top US general, Dan Caine, addressed the possibility of the US navy escorting vessels through the strait. “We’re looking at a range of options there, and we’ll figure out how to solve problems as they come to us,” he told reporters. Alongside Caine, the Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, said if “Iran does anything to stop the flow of oil within the strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America 20 times harder than they have been hit thus far”. Iran has repeatedly targeted energy infrastructure with attacks that appear aimed at generating enough global economic pain to pressure the US and Israel to end their strikes. The strait is just 34km (21 miles) wide at its narrowest point, with the shipping lane just 3.2km wide in either direction. In the 1980s, Iran mined the chokepoint during its tanker war with Iraq. On Tuesday, Amin Nasser, the president and chief executive of Saudi Arabia’s oil company Aramco, said tankers were being rerouted to avoid the strait, and that the company’s east-west pipeline would reach i ts full capacity this week of 7m barrels a day being brought to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has also proposed its largest-ever release of oil reserves to counter soaring crude prices, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing officials familiar with the matter. The release would exceed the 182m barrels IEA member countries put on the market in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the newspaper said. The proposal was circulated at an emergency meeting of energy officials from the IEA’s 32 member countries on Tuesday, with a decision expected on Wednesday. AP, Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report