(Bloomberg) — US forces rescued an airman from Iran more than a day after his fighter jet was shot down and President Donald Trump threatened to target the country’s infrastructure, while the Islamic Republic’s continued attacks damaged Kuwait’s oil headquarters and shut down an Emirati petrochemicals plant.
Trump renewed his threats to destroy Iranian power plants and bridges on Tuesday, using an expletive in a social media post warning that if the Strait of Hormuz wasn’t reopened, Iran would be “living in hell – JUST WATCH.” Earlier, he said the time left on the 10-day deadline for Tehran to make a peace deal with the US was running out.
The president also hailed the dramatic rescue operation, where the US deployed dozens of aircraft to retrieve the injured crew member from a mountainous area, a day after a second person from the same F-15E jet was rescued.
Trump told Israel’s Channel 12 in an interview Sunday that the Israeli government “helped us a little,” while “most of the operation was American.”
The rescue mission spanned two days and involved hundreds of special operation troops, with US aircraft dropping bombs and firing on Iranian convoys to keep them away from the aviator’s hiding area, the New York Times reported.
House Intelligence Chairman Rick Crawford, an Arkansas Republican, said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures that the US didn’t sustain any casualties but had to destroy “a couple” of US aircraft on the ground in Iran to avoid having them fall into enemy hands.
Trump said he plans on holding a news conference at the Oval Office on Monday.
The downing of US aircraft pierced the aura of invincibility Trump has sought to project, as the war with Iran enters a second month. Iran’s attacks have brought the Strait of Hormuz — through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas normally flows — close to a standstill, lifting energy prices and rattling global markets.
Oil prices have been roiled by the conflict and soaring costs for products such as jet fuel and diesel are threatening a renewed wave of inflation. OPEC+ members raised their production quotas for May in a symbolic move as the war constrains production and shipments from several of the alliance’s largest members.
Iran said five people were killed and 170 others wounded in an airstrike on a petrochemical complex in the southwest, an attack claimed by the Israel Defense Forces.
Bahrain said a drone attack started a fire at storage facilities belonging to the state energy company Bapco Energies, though it was later extinguished without causing any casualties.
Kuwait’s oil sector faced a fresh barrage of attacks on Sunday with drone strikes causing fires at its refining arm and petrochemical facilities. Those came hours after Kuwait Petroleum Corp.’s headquarters, which also houses the country’s oil ministry, was set ablaze in a similar attack.
A separate strike on power and water desalination plants caused significant damage, putting two generation units out of service.
Borouge PLC suspended operations at a petrochemicals plant in Abu Dhabi after multiple fires broke out from falling debris following interceptions of Iranian attacks, the government media office said.
Saudi Arabia also reported cruise missile attacks, saying that they were shot down.
Israel said Sunday it struck more than 120 air defense and missile systems in central and western Iran over the past 24 hours. The country’s defense minister threatened further attacks on Iranian infrastructure.
An Iranian missile barrage targeted an industrial site in southern Israel, where shrapnel caused minor damage at a factory with no injuries reported, the country’s fire department said.
Iran has shown little sign of accepting Trump’s demands for peace and has laid out its own conditions — most of them unacceptable to the US and Israel. The president has warned that if Iran doesn’t agree to his terms and open Hormuz to all shipping traffic, the US would bomb the country’s civilian energy infrastructure, strikes that could constitute a war crime under international law.
Oman’s Foreign Ministry said in a post on X on Sunday that it discussed with Iran possible options to ensure “smooth flow” through Hormuz.
Iran announced Saturday that Iraq would be exempt from its shipping restrictions in the strait, allowing for as much as 3 million barrels a day of Iraqi oil cargoes. An Iraqi official struck a cautious note, saying volumes would depend on whether shipping companies are willing to risk entering the strait.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, who met Iran’s ambassador on Sunday, said the two countries agreed on the need to continue their cooperation on allowing Iraqi oil to pass through Hormuz.
The Suezmax Ocean Thunder, an oil tanker that loaded its cargo at Iraq’s Basrah terminal in early March, appeared to be transiting the strait en route to Malaysia, according to tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. Such vessels can carry about 1 million barrels of crude.
Attacks targeting the perimeter of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant left one security staff member dead, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported yesterday. The main sections of the facility, where Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom has workers, were unaffected, Tasnim said.
More than 5,000 people have been killed in the conflict, almost three-quarters of them in Iran, according to government organizations and the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. More than 1,460 people have been killed in Lebanon, where Israel is fighting a parallel war against Iran-allied Hezbollah.
–With assistance from Yasufumi Saito, Reshmi Basu and Khalid Al-Ansary.
(Updates with more Trump remarks starting in second paragraph)
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