Extract from ABC News
Smoke rises after an apparent drone strike on Dubai's international airport. (Supplied: Reddit)
I'm ABC global affairs editor Laura Tingle and I'm in Dubai.
Here's my daily update to help you quickly understand what's going on in this war in the Middle East.
Here's what you need to know today:
- Fighting in Lebanon: While US and Israeli forces have been pounding Tehran, Israel's assault on Lebanon has continued to escalate in recent days, now spreading as far as central Beirut. Fatalities in Lebanon are now the second highest in the war — about half of those in Iran to date — and 800,000 people are believed to have been displaced.
- Attacks in the Gulf states: Iranian attacks on its neighbours in the Gulf states are threatening to broaden from energy to the banking and technology sectors, with Iran saying it will retaliate to an attack on an Iranian bank. In addition to broader attacks in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar's capital Doha yesterday, Dubai's international financial district and Internet City (where Microsoft and Oracle are located) were identified as possible areas of risk. AFP reported US group Citi and consultancies Deloitte and PwC were among firms to close their offices in the Middle East's financial hub after the Iranian threats. HSBC has closed all its branches in Qatar until further notice, and there are reports of other businesses closing offices in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for the remainder of the week.
- Flight risk: Dubai's attempts to bring some normality back to its role as a regional aviation hub suffered a blow with the news that four people were injured when two Iranian drones fell near Dubai International Airport. What's more, a number of airlines have been cancelling flights to Dubai and other Gulf destinations for the next few days or, in the case of several airlines, even longer: British Airways ("until later this year"), Cathay Pacific (the end of March), Finnair (March 29) and KLM (March 28).
- Oil: While the International Energy Agency has announced the largest ever release of oil from global emergency reserves to deal with the growing oil crisis, the threats to physical supply continue to grow. Three vessels were hit in the Strait of Hormuz, even as the US military claimed it had struck more than 60 Iranian vessels and amid reports Iran was laying mines in the strait. Iran's military command said the world should be prepared for oil to hit $200 a barrel.
What's the fallout?
This war increasingly feels like a contest between an "all hardware, no strategy" United States and a "less hardware, lots of strategy" Iran, at least as far as the war of words is concerned.
The United States continues to talk a big game in terms of how many things it has destroyed in Iran, and is clearly regarded as having the far superior "kinetic" power. But what it doesn't seem to have destroyed yet is Iran's will to fight or its capacity to continue striking at targets in Israel and the wider Gulf region.
If anything, Iran seems to have become even more aggressive in the past couple of days and in the wake of the election of its new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.
It has been demonstrating that it doesn't actually have to fire lots of missiles — or even hit targets — to cause massive disruption to the global economy and to US President Donald Trump's narrative about how his country is completely winning the war.
Iran launched missiles or drones in the direction of several regional airports on Wednesday, notably Dubai's massive international airport. While it was only debris that landed in Dubai, and luckily only four people were injured, it caused more disruption and was part of a pattern of ongoing attacks that have resulted in airlines increasingly cancelling their services to the regional hub and to other regional destinations.
Iran's threat to banks and the regional offices of big US tech companies hasn't even required a missile or drone strike to have banks close their branches or businesses in financial and tech districts to quietly warn their staff to stay away.
Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz and seen the production of oil and gas reduced in Gulf states, mostly through the threat of strikes: Insurers won't insure ships, and shipping companies won't move their vessels through the strait even if Iran isn't shelling them (though it struck three yesterday).
In a particular humiliation for the US and Gulf countries, The Wall Street Journal reports: "Iran is exporting more oil through the Strait of Hormuz than before the war, showing it is in control of a strategic waterway that it has closed off to the rest of the region's oil producers."
"As Gulf Arab oil producers from Saudi Arabia to Iraq cut production and scramble for new routes that bypass the strait, Iran is conducting business as usual, according to data from tanker-tracking firm Kpler, throwing a financial lifeline to Tehran as it comes under blistering attack from the US and Israel," the newspaper says.
If you want more today, listen to this …
- If You're Listening: There's a persistent fantasy in Washington that regimes are like light bulbs: Smash the fixture, screw in a new one, problem solved. The reality in Iran is very different. Matt Bevan asks what's Trump's plan for long-term stability in the region?🎧.
And here's how to stay up to date:
You can keep track of the latest updates from Iran and around the world throughout the day via our live blog.
Thanks for joining me. I'll see you at the same time tomorrow.
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