Live Updates: No signs of war with Iran or its impact on oil and gas prices easing as 3-week mark approaches

The UAE Defense Ministry said the country’s air defenses had intercepted four Iranian ballistic missiles and 26 drones on Friday.

“Since the start of the blatant Iranian attacks, UAE air defenses have faced 338 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles and 1,740 drones,” the ministry said, adding that the attacks had killed eight people, including two Emirati military service members.

People across Israel were subjected to round after round of Iranian missile launches on Friday, with alarms ringing and cell phones alerting people in virtually every corner of the country to enter shelters as air defenses went into action.

At least a dozen salvoes were reported from Iran on Friday, even though the United States and Israel said for days that the Islamic Republic’s offensive capabilities had been virtually weakened by nearly three weeks of joint strikes in Iran.

Debris from the missile interceptions fell on several communities, including Rehovot, just south of Tel Aviv, where images showed a house on fire. National rescue agency Magen David Adom said it was transporting a man and a woman, both in their 70s, “in mild condition with suspected explosion injuries,” to a local hospital after the impact.

The MDA shared an image of first responders rushing to the scene of a fire in a residential area in Petah Tiqva, also east of Tel Aviv.

A News themezone producer in Tel Aviv said there were “almost continuous missiles from Iran into all districts” on Friday, as well as new drone launches by Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Israeli police and intelligence agencies said Friday that a reservist serving in a unit of the country’s Iron Dome missile defense system was arrested on suspicion of selling “sensitive security information” to contacts he knew were working for Iran.

“Raz Cohen, a 26-year-old Jerusalem resident who served in the reserves of the Iron Dome system, was recently arrested,” the Israeli national police and the Shin Bet intelligence agency said in a joint statement. “He is suspected of committing security crimes involving contact with Iranian intelligence agents to carry out security missions under their direction.”

The statement said Cohen had been in contact with Iranian intelligence officials for months and “under their direction, was asked to perform various security-related tasks, including the transfer of sensitive security information to which he was exposed during his service,” for which it said he “received monetary payments.”

Russia summoned Israel’s ambassador to Moscow on Friday for a reprimand after a reporter and photographer for the pro-Kremlin news outlet RT were injured in an alleged Israeli missile attack in Lebanon.

Israeli Ambassador Oded Yosef spent about 30 minutes at the Foreign Ministry in Moscow on Friday and then refused to speak to journalists as he left, Russian state news agency TASS said, adding that Russian diplomats had conveyed their “strong condemnation, describing Israel’s actions as a serious violation of international law.”

According to TASS, Suini reported that no warnings were given before the attack, and that he appeared to have targeted his RT team, which was reporting from an area that Israel had warned would be targeted.

Separately, Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Friday saying Moscow was “gravely concerned about the continuing armed confrontation in the Persian Gulf and the risks of further escalation.”

“The magnitude of damage to energy and other critical infrastructure in Iran and neighboring Arab states is increasing. We call for an immediate cessation of hostilities, which are the result of unprovoked aggression by the United States and Israel against Iran,” the ministry said, more than four years after Russia’s ongoing and unprovoked large-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine.

The Israel Defense Forces announced another targeted killing of an Iranian official on Friday, saying that an intelligence-led airstrike “eliminated Ali Mohammad Naini, the spokesman and head of public relations” for Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“Over the past two years, he served as the main propagandist of the IRGC as part of the Iranian terrorist regime,” the IDF said, accusing Naini of disseminating Iranian propaganda “to its proxies throughout the Middle East to influence and promote terrorist attacks against the State of Israel from different fronts.”

“The elimination of Naini adds to a series of eliminations of dozens of senior Iranian regime figures during the operation,” the Israeli military said, adding that it “will continue to operate resolutely against commanders and senior officials of the Iranian terrorist regime.”

The IDF announced earlier this week the assassination of the leader of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council. Ali Larijaniwhich was in charge of the IRGC and other security forces, in a similar targeted assassination earlier this week.

Sri Lanka denied permission to the United States to park two of its fighter jets at a civilian airport in the island’s south in early March, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said Friday.

Washington wanted to move two of its missile-armed planes from a base in Djibouti to Sri Lanka’s Mattala international civilian airport, Dissanayake told parliament.

The request, made on February 26, two days before the US-Israeli attack on Iran began, was rejected to maintain Colombo’s neutrality and ensure that its territory was not used for any military purpose that could help or hinder either party, he said.

Sri Lanka was dragged into the fallout of war when a US submarine torpedoed an Iranian frigate, the IRIS Dena, off its coast in March.

“They wanted to bring two fighter jets armed with eight anti-ship missiles to Mattala International Airport from March 4 to 8, and we said ‘no,'” Dissanayake said.

He did not say whether the US request was to use Sri Lanka as a base for aircraft to carry out offensive actions against Iran.

Dissanayake said Iran had also requested a port call for three of its warships, returning from India after a naval exercise, on the same day the United States requested permission to park its two planes.

“We were still considering the Iranian request to bring the three ships to Colombo from March 9 to 13. If we had said ‘yes’ to Iran, we would have had to say ‘yes’ to the United States as well,” he said. “But we didn’t. We firmly maintain our position of neutrality.”

An oil refinery in the Israeli port city of Haifa was hit by an Iranian attack on Thursday, and images show black smoke billowing from the complex.

The Reuters news agency quoted officials from the company that owns the facility as saying on Friday that the impact had damaged external infrastructure that belongs to a third party but is essential to the refinery’s operations.

Sources told Reuters that operations at the refinery would likely remain offline for several days.

One of the United States’ most advanced fighter jets was forced to make an emergency landing after flying a combat mission over Iran, the US military’s Central Command said Thursday.

U.S. military officials told News themezone on Friday that the F-35 made an emergency landing at an undisclosed U.S. air base in the Middle East and that the pilot was in stable condition.

CNN was the first to report the incident and said the plane was believed to have been hit by Iranian fire. If so, it would be the first successful Iranian attack on a US aircraft since the war began, and would have come as President Trump said Iran no longer had that capability.

“Your air force is gone, your anti-aircraft equipment is gone. We fly wherever we want,” Trump said Thursday in the Oval Office. “We don’t have anyone even shooting at us.”

Loud explosions rocked Dubai as air defenses intercepted incoming fire over the city, where people observed Eid al-Fitr, the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, and mosques gave the day’s first call to prayer.

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

The new attacks came after an intense day in which Iran attacked the region’s energy infrastructure and launched more than a dozen missile salvos at Israel following the attack on South Pars.

South Pars, the Iranian part of the world’s largest gas field, lies off the coast of the Persian Gulf and is jointly owned with Qatar. Given that around 80% of the energy generated in Iran comes from natural gas, the attack represented a direct threat to the country’s electricity supply.

The Kuwaiti military said early Friday local time that Iran had launched missile and drone attacks against the country.

In a social media post, the Kuwait Armed Forces said that if explosions are heard, “they are the result of air defense systems intercepting hostile attacks.”

An earlier drone attack on Kuwait’s Mina Al-Ahmadi state refinery caused a fire but no injuries, state news agency KUNA reported Thursday.

The Kuwaiti military previously reported that it was attacked with 18 Iranian drones during a 24-hour period from Wednesday to Thursday, 13 of which were intercepted and destroyed. Two of the drones attacked the refinery, the military said.

Israel attacked Tehran with airstrikes on Friday morning local time as Iranians celebrated Nowruz, or Persian New Year.

Activists reported hearing attacks around Iran’s capital. The strikes came a day after Israel vowed to refrain from further attacks on a key Iranian gas field and Iran stepped up attacks on oil and natural gas facilities around the Gulf.

The Israel Defense Forces wrote on social media that they had “begun a wave of attacks against the infrastructure of the Iranian terrorist regime in the heart of Tehran.”

Iran kept up its own retaliatory attacks against Israel that have sent millions of people to shelters, with sirens blaring across a wide swath of the north, from Haifa to the Galilee and the Lebanese border.

It also continued its attacks against its Gulf neighbors. Loud explosions rocked Dubai early Friday as air defenses intercepted incoming fire over the city, where people observed Eid al-Fitr, the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, and mosques gave the day’s first call to prayer.

News/AP

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran’s current leadership structure is “unclear” after a series of guided missile attacks killed several prominent clerics and leaders during the war.

Top Iranian security official Ali Larijani and other senior leaders were killed in attacks earlier this week, reducing the number of senior regime officials still alive.

Ayatollah Mojtaba Khameneithe new supreme leader and son of the late supreme leader Ali Khamenei, is believed to have been wounded in the attack. who killed his father at the beginning of the war.

“Mojtaba, the substitute ayatollah, has not shown his face,” Netanyahu told reporters during a news conference Thursday night. “Have you seen it? We haven’t seen it, and we can’t guarantee exactly what is happening there. There is a cloud here that is not clear.”

Netanyahu also speculated that the new supreme leader would not have the same influence as his father.

“I think the authority and dominance that Khamenei has had will not be transferred to anyone,” Netanyahu said. “Not with Mojtaba, if he’s there, nor with anyone else.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that his country’s military would delay additional attacks on a key Iranian gas field.

Netanyahu also said that Israel acted alone in attacking the South Pars gas field in Iran.

“President Trump asked us to postpone future attacks, and we are doing so,” the prime minister said during a news conference Thursday night.