U.S. warplanes and attack helicopters are hitting Iranian targets in an effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, officials said. The price of oil remained high as new strikes hit Gulf energy facilities.
Photo- Worshippers celebrate Eid el Fitr at Mohammad El Amin Mosque in Beirut Lebanon
Here’s the latest.
U.S. warplanes and attack helicopters have ramped up assaults against Iranian drones and naval vessels in an effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, American officials said, as oil prices remained high on Friday amid new attacks on energy sites in the Persian Gulf.
As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran approached the three-week mark, American commanders have been scrambling to accelerate plans to thwart Iran’s ability to choke off the strait, the critical passageway in and out of the Persian Gulf. Iran has used a lethal combination of mines, missiles and armed drones — or the threat of using them — to all but shut down shipping through the strait, through which passes a large part of the world’s oil and natural gas.
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi told his British counterpart in a phone call that Iran considers the United Kingdom’s provision of military bases to the United States as “participation in aggression,” according to an account of the call posted on Araghchi’s Telegram channel on Friday. Araghchi demanded that the United Kingdom refrain from cooperating with the United States and Israel in the military and media fields, the account said.
Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, criticized the Trump administration for lack of transparency about the cost of the war in Iran. “We cannot get any accounting. No specificity for what we will need going forward,” she said, directing her frustration at Ambassador Mike Waltz during a hearing at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.
Lawmakers have been pressing for more details about funding for the war as the Pentagon seeks $200 billion from Congress, a figure nearly equal to a quarter of the Defense Department’s annual budget. So far, no details have been shared with Congress.
Deferring to Trump, G.O.P. lawmakers resist a public accounting on Iran.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, center, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at an Oval Office meeting on Thursday. Democrats have demanded they make the case under oath in congressional hearings for the war.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Republicans on Capitol Hill have given President Trump wide latitude to wage war on Iran with no congressional approval or limits.
They have deferred to him almost entirely on his justifications for the conflict, echoing the rationales offered by him and his top officials, even as they have given shifting and contradictory explanations.
NATO – President Trump again complained on social media about NATO’s not participating in American efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Calling the military alliance a “paper tiger,” he labeled its other members “cowards” and stressed his view that joining the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran would involve “so little risk.”
But the alliance does not require member nations to involve themselves directly in pre-emptive strikes launched by other members on their enemies. Its mutual defense pact has been invoked just once, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
‘We are at zero’: War-weary Lebanon marks Eid with muted celebration.
New York Times
