In a significant development that is expected to bring relief to the Gulf states and to rattled energy markets, Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian announced on Saturday that the interim leadership council decided and instructed Iran’s armed forces that “from now on they should not attack neighboring countries or fire missiles at them, unless we are attacked from those countries.”
In addition, Pezeshkian apologised to Iran’s neighbours explaining that “what happened was that our commanders and our leader lost their lives following the barbaric aggression and our armed forces, the champions that are sacrificing their lives to defend our territorial integrity, fired at will because their commanders were absent and did whatever necessary. They proudly and powerfully defended our homeland.”
It’s unclear whether Pezeshkian’s announcement will be followed by Iran’s military commanders who traditionally take their instructions from the ayatollah.
Iran currently doesn’t have a supreme leader since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in US-Israeli strikes on the first day of the war a week ago.
However just after the Iranian president’s statement, Dubai airport was attacked by an Iranian drone and Qatar reported it intercepted an Iranian ballistic missile.
US says more intense bombing lies ahead
There is no foreseeable end to the fighting and the Trump administration approved a new $151 million (€129 million) arms sale to Israel after Trump said he would not negotiate with Iran without its “unconditional surrender.”
Meanwhile, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a television interview that the “biggest bombing campaign” of the war was still to come.
Iran’s UN ambassador said the country would “take all necessary measures” to defend itself.
Associated Press video showed explosions flashing and smoke rising over western Tehran as Israel said it had begun a broad wave of strikes.
The US and Israel have battered Iran with strikes, targeting its military capabilities, leadership and nuclear programme. The stated goals and timelines for the war have repeatedly shifted, as the US has at times suggested it seeks to topple Iran’s government or elevate new leadership from within.
The fighting has killed at least 1,230 people in Iran, more than 200 in Lebanon and around a dozen in Israel, according to officials in those countries. Six US troops have been killed.
Iran strikes Gulf States as fighting spreads
In a sign of the widening nature of the conflict, sirens sounded early on Saturday in Bahrain as Iranian attacks targeted the island kingdom. And Saudi Arabia said it destroyed drones headed toward its vast Shaybah oil field and shot down a ballistic missile launched toward Prince Sultan Air Base, which hosts US forces.
In Dubai, several blasts were heard Saturday morning and the government said it had activated air defences. Passengers waiting for flights out at Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest for international travel, found themselves ushered down into train tunnels at the sprawling airfield after the alert sounded.
Later that morning, long-haul carrier Emirates said that ”all flights to and from Dubai have been suspended until further notice.”
Qatar’s energy minister, Saad al-Kaabi, warned in an interview with the Financial Times that the war could “bring down the economies of the world,” predicting a widespread shutdown of Gulf energy exports that could send oil to €138 a barrel.
The price for a barrel of benchmark US crude rose above €83 on Friday for the first time in more than two years.
Writing for the Qatar-funded satellite news network Al Jazeera, a regional analyst warned Iran was making “a strategic miscalculation of historic proportions.” Al Jazeera, a pan-Arab satellite news network owned and funded by Qatar’s government, has been used in the past to signal Doha’s opinions on regional matters.
Sultan al-Khulaifi, a senior researcher at the Centre for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, wrote: “By spreading the conflict to the Gulf, Tehran is doing precisely what Israel could not do alone: steering the war away from the Israeli-Iranian axis and transforming it into a confrontation between Iran and its Arab neighbours.”
On Saturday, the defence minister of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan’s army chief met to discuss ways to stop the attacks coming from Iran, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported. Saudi Prince Khalid bin Salman, a son of King Salman, talked with Field Marshal Asim Munir in Riyadh about the Iranian attacks. Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan have signed a mutual defence pact that defines any attack on either nation as an attack on both.
Also early on Saturday, incoming missiles from Iran had people heading to bomb shelters across Israel and loud booms sounded in Jerusalem. There were no immediate reports of casualties by Israel’s emergency services.