Iran threatens world tourism sites and says it is still building missiles

Iran has threatened to target recreational and tourist sites worldwide and insisted it was still building missiles.

Its supreme leader issued another defiant statement on Friday, nearly three weeks into US-Israeli strikes that have killed a number of Tehran’s top leaders and hammered its weapons and energy industries.

The United States was meanwhile deploying three more warships and roughly 2,500 additional marines to the Middle East, a US official told the Associated Press.

Iran fired on Israel and energy sites in neighbouring Gulf Arab states as many in the region marked one of the holiest days on the Muslim calendar.

Iranians were also marking the Persian new year, known as Nowruz, a normally festive holiday that is more subdued this year.

With little information coming out of Iran, it was not clear how much damage its arms, nuclear or energy facilities have sustained since the war began on February 28 or even who was truly in charge of the country.

But Iran has showed it is still capable of attacks that are choking off oil supplies and scrambling the global economy, raising food and fuel prices far beyond the Middle East.

The US and Israel have offered shifting rationales for the war, from hoping to foment an uprising that topples Iran’s leadership to eliminating its nuclear and missile programmes. There have been no public signs of any such uprising and no end in sight to the war.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei praised Iranians’ steadfastness in the face of war in a written statement read on Iranian television to mark Nowruz.

Mr Khamenei said the US and Israeli attacks were based on an illusion that killing Iran’s top leaders could cause the overthrow of the government. He commended Iranians for “building a nationwide defensive front” and “delivering such a bewildering blow that the enemy fell into contradictions and irrational statements”.

Mr Khamenei has not been seen in public since he became supreme leader following the assassination of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Israeli strikes at the start of the war. US and Israeli officials suspect the younger Khamenei was wounded.

Iran’s top military spokesman, General Abolfazl Shekarchi, warned on Friday that “parks, recreational areas and tourist destinations” worldwide will not be safe for Tehran’s enemies. The threat renewed concerns that Iran may revert to using militant attacks beyond the Middle East as a pressure tactic.

A US official confirmed the further build-up of American forces in the region, saying the USS Boxer and two other amphibious assault ships have deployed along with roughly 2,500 marines. Two other US officials confirmed that ships were deploying, without saying where they were headed.

US and Israeli leaders have said that weeks of strikes have decimated Iran’s military. Air strikes have also killed its supreme leader, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and a raft of other top-ranking military and political leaders.

The Israeli military said on Friday that Esmail Ahmadi, head of intelligence for the Basij, had been killed by a strike earlier in the week that hit other Basij leaders.

On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Iran’s navy was sunk and its air force in tatters, while adding that its ability to produce ballistic missiles had been taken out.

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard disputed the missile claim on Friday.

“We are producing missiles even during war conditions, which is amazing, and there is no particular problem in stockpiling,” spokesman General Ali Mohammad Naeini was quoted as saying in Iran’s state-run IRAN newspaper.

A short time after the statement was released, Iranian state television said Gen Naeini was killed in an air strike.

Iran has stepped up its attacks on energy sites in Gulf Arab states after Israel bombed Iran’s massive South Pars offshore natural gas field earlier in the week.

Two waves of Iranian drones attacked a Kuwaiti oil refinery early Friday, sparking a fire.

The Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery, which can process some 730,000 barrels of oil per day, is one of the largest in the Middle East. It was damaged on Thursday in another Iranian attack.

Bahrain’s Interior Ministry said a fire broke out after shrapnel from an intercepted projectile landed on a warehouse, and Saudi Arabia reported shooting down multiple drones targeting its oil-rich Eastern Province.

Heavy explosions shook Dubai as air defences intercepted incoming fire over the city, where people were observing Eid al-Fitr, the end of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

In Iran, meanwhile, many were marking Nowruz even as Israel said it had launched new strikes, and explosions were heard over Tehran.

The Persian new year, which coincides with the spring equinox, is a tradition observed across south-western Asia that dates back thousands of years.

Loud explosions could also be heard in Jerusalem after the Israeli army warned of incoming Iranian missiles.

First responders said they treated two people around 70 years old who were lightly wounded.

In addition to steadily striking Iran, Israel has regularly hit Lebanon, targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants who have been firing rockets and drones into Israel.

On Friday, Israel broadened its attacks to Syria, saying it hit infrastructure there in response to what it described as attacks on the minority Druze population in the southern province of Sweida.

More than 1,300 people have been killed in Iran during the war. Israeli strikes in Lebanon have displaced more than one million people, according to the Lebanese government, which says more than 1,000 people have been killed. Israel says it has killed more than 500 Hezbollah militants.

In Israel, 15 people have been killed by Iranian missile fire. Four people were also killed in the occupied West Bank by an Iranian missile strike.

At least 13 US military members have been killed.

Iran’s attacks on energy infrastructure in the Gulf combined with its stranglehold on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and other critical goods are transported, has raised concerns of a global energy crisis.

US President Donald Trump lobbed fresh insults at Nato allies who have spurned his call for help protecting the strait.

US allies have refused to join the war, saying they were not consulted before the US and Israel launched it. Mr Trump called Nato members “cowards” in a social media post, saying: “Nato is a paper tiger.”

Brent crude oil, the international standard, has soared during the fighting, and was around 108 dollars per barrel on Friday, up from roughly 70 dollars per barrel before the war began.

Surging fuel prices come at a moment when many world leaders were already struggling to bring down high prices on food and many consumer goods. Asia is getting hit the hardest as most of the oil and gas exiting the Strait of Hormuz is transported there.