WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump appealed for Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords in an address at an investment forum linked to the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, Bloomberg reported.
Trump said the war against Iran would transform the region, by eliminating a nuclear threat from Iran, benefiting US allies in the region and sparking an economic boom.
“The Middle East will be transformed, and the future of that region is never, I don’t think it’s ever looked brighter,” Trump said Friday at the Future Investment Initiative Priority summit in Miami. “We did the Abraham Accords. I hope you’re going to be getting into the Abraham Accords finally.”
Trump cast Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman as reluctant in the past to join the accords, agreements from his first term that normalised diplomatic relationships between Israel and some Middle East nations. But the US president indicated that with what he argued was a successful military campaign against Iran, “it’s now time.” “We’ve now taken them out, and they are out bigly,” Trump said. “We got to get into the Abraham Accords.”
“We saved not just Israel, we saved the Middle East and it was proven by all those rockets that fired down upon you. Saudi Arabia got hit a lot,” Trump added, citing retaliatory drone and missile strikes from Iran on Gulf allies.
The US president repeated his calls for Iran to reopen the strait and touted the negotiations with Tehran, even as he indicated that attacks on the Islamic Republic would continue, saying there were thousands of targets still left.
“We’re negotiating now, and be great if we could do something. But they have to open it up,” Trump said. He went on to refer to the waterway as the “Strait of Trump.” “Excuse me. I’m so sorry. Such a terrible mistake,” he continued. “The fake news will say he accidentally said — No, there’s no accidents with me. Not too many.”
The forum where Trump spoke draws business leaders and political figures and is organised by a group affiliated with Saudi Arabia’s $1 trillion Public Investment Fund with the aim of promoting investment opportunities in the kingdom. But Friday’s gathering has been overshadowed by the Iran war, which has sent energy prices soaring and the risk other nations will be drawn into the conflict.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels announced their entry into the Middle East war on Saturday by launching a ballistic missile towards Israel, as the world struggled to contain the economic damage of a conflict now entering its second month.
The intervention of Iran’s Yemeni allies in Tehran’s conflict with Israel and the United States will spark concern about disruptions to Red Sea shipping, with trade from the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz already choked off.
With Hormuz all but impassable, many shipments to and from the region go through the Omani port of Salalah, on the Arabian Sea, but Danish shipping giant Maersk said operations had been temporarily suspended there after a drone attack injured one worker and damaged a crane.
The war began when the United States and Israel launched a wave of airstrikes across Iran, killing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, engulfing the Middle East in conflict and triggering global economic pain by sending oil and gas prices soaring.
With no end to the conflict in sight despite Trump’s optimism that US forces have obliterated Iran’s military, a spokesman for the Houthis issued a video statement declaring that the group had launched ballistic missiles towards Israeli bases. A few hours earlier, the Israeli military had said it had “identified the launch of a missile from Yemen toward Israeli territory, aerial defence systems are operating to intercept the threat”. There were no reports of any casualties or damage in Israel, and the missile was reportedly intercepted. Iran’s military said on Saturday that it had targeted a US logistics vessel near the Omani port of Salalah on the Arabian Sea. Oman said a drone attack on the port wounded a foreign worker. Air travel has also been disrupted. On Saturday, authorities in Kuwait and in the city of Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan said airport facilities had been damaged in strikes.
Fire also broke out after Iranian missiles and drones hit the Khalifa Economic Zone Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, injuring six people. The firm Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA) reported significant damage from the attack on its facility.
In Iran, meanwhile, production was shut down at a major steel plant in the southwest after US-Israeli strikes, according to a statement from the Khuzestan Steel Company, cited by the Shargh newspaper.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have warned they will retaliate for any economic damage by striking industrial sites across the region, having earlier issued similar warnings for US military bases and hotels hosting American troops.
The Guards also said that they had found and dismantled more than 120 unexploded cluster bombs, alleging they were dropped during US and Israeli attacks several days ago on the southern province of Fars. Pezeshkian sent a message to other countries in the region, warning: “If you want development and security, don’t let our enemies run the war from your lands.”
An Iranian missile and drone attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia on Friday wounded at least 12 American soldiers, two of them seriously, according to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, citing unidentified officials.
Qatar announced a fresh missile interception on Saturday, its first in a little over a week. Thailand on Saturday joined a handful of nations that have announced they were able to secure safe passage for their oil tankers through Hormuz with Iranian approval. Indonesia said it was in “positive talks” to secure the same exemption.
A strike in northern Iraq on Saturday killed one Iraqi fighter and wounded six more, a medical official said, in the latest attack on a former paramilitary coalition that is now part of the army but includes pro-Iran factions. One PMF fighter was killed and six wounded after two missiles struck a base near Kirkuk city’s international airport on Saturday, security and medical sources told AFP.
The Israeli military said it had struck an Iranian research facility for naval weapons, while a series of loud explosions rattled Tehran as night fell on Saturday.
Israel’s military said Saturday that it hit the headquarters of Iran’s Marine Industries Organisation during a wave of overnight attacks across Tehran, saying the facility developed “a wide range of naval weaponry, including surface and sub-surface vessels, (and) manned and unmanned equipment”.
An AFP journalist in Tehran reported intense explosions and a plume of black smoke overnight.
An Israeli military spokesman said Saturday attacks on Iranian military industry had intensified, and “within a few days, we will complete attacks on all critical components”.
On Saturday evening, another wave of blasts rang out in the capital for several minutes, though it was not clear what was targeted. “I miss a peaceful night’s sleep,” an artist in Tehran told AFP, adding that the previous night’s strikes were “so intense it felt like all of Tehran was shaking”. “We are powerless to change a government that kills, and we don’t want this war either. We just want a normal, simple life.”
Iranian media said that US-Israeli strikes hit multiple residential areas, killing more than a dozen people overnight. Strikes on residential areas in Borujerd, a city in the western province of Lorestan, killed “seven and wounded 36 others,” Fars news agency quoted provincial official Ghodratollah Valadi as saying.
Similar attacks on the northwestern city of Zanjan killed at least five people and wounded seven others, according to ISNA, quoting the city’s political deputy governor Ali Sadeghi.
Kuwait International Airport was targeted by multiple drone attacks on Saturday that caused significant damage to its radar system but resulted in no casualties, state news agency KUNA reported, citing the country’s Civil Aviation Authority.
The authority’s spokesperson later said the attacks were carried out by Iran, its proxies and the armed factions it supports. Ukraine on Saturday said Iran was lying about having struck a depot housing Ukrainian anti-drone systems in the UAE, after Tehran said it destroyed a facility used to aid US forces.
Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi was facing a fierce backlash Saturday from some Iranians for joining a transitional body the son of Iran’s ousted shah hopes will smooth his path to return to Iran.
AFP journalists reported two blasts heard over Jerusalem, after the Israeli military said it had detected incoming missiles launched from Iran. The apparent attack came shortly after the Israeli military said it had completed a wave of strikes across the Iranian capital Tehran.
Bahrain on Saturday denied that it was cracking down on citizens based on their religious identity after activists reported a slew of arrests they said had mainly targeted Shias amid the Middle East war. The statement came after two Bahraini rights groups told AFP that more than 200 people, the vast majority of them from the Shia community, had been arrested since the beginning of the war.
Some of those arrested were accused of espionage for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards or having links to Iran, while others were charged with treason, sharing footage of Iran’s attacks, or glorifying the actions of Iran, among other accusations.
Iran’s military said Saturday that it had targeted a US logistics vessel near the Omani port of Salalah. UAE authorities said fires broke out early Saturday at an industrial zone following a missile and drone attack from Iran, leaving five people with injuries. The United Arab Emirates’ defence ministry said air defences were responding to incoming cruise missiles and drones fired by Iran, as Tehran pressed strikes in the Gulf a month into the regional war. The Abu Dhabi government media office said in a statement posted online that authorities were dealing with two fires in the area of the emirate’s Khalifa Economic Zones.
The statement said the fires had broken out due to falling debris from a “successful interception” of a ballistic missile.
A separate statement said “the incident has resulted in injuries ranging from moderate to minor sustained by five individuals of an Indian nationality”.
An Iranian attack on a base in Saudi Arabia wounded at least 12 American soldiers, two of them seriously, US media reported Friday.
The attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia included at least one missile and several drones, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified officials. The soldiers were inside a building at the base when it was struck, the Journal reported. Several aerial refuelling planes also suffered damage in the attack, the reports said.
Diplomatic Adviser to the UAE President Dr Anwar bin Mohammed Gargash said some media outlets had misinterpreted the UAE’s position and stressed the need to place it in its proper context, stating that the country has been facing Iranian aggression targeting its infrastructure and threatening civilian lives.
In a post on X, Gargash said the UAE had been subjected for weeks to attacks aimed at its national interests and critical infrastructure, adding that the country continues to respond with resolve and efficiency. He said defending sovereignty and the nation is both an honour and a responsibility.
Gargash added that despite the ongoing tensions, the UAE is convinced that a political solution is the only path to ensuring sustainable security in the region, rather than temporary measures that could reproduce instability for decades to come. He said this approach underpins the country’s positions and policy direction.
An Israeli strike killed three journalists in south Lebanon, including a well-known reporter for Hezbollah´s Al Manar network, with Lebanese authorities denouncing the attack as a “war crime”.
The amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli has arrived in the Middle East, US Central Command said, as speculation soars about the possible deployment of US ground troops in Iran.The ship, which is usually based in Japan, arrived in the region on Friday, Centcom said in a post on X, noting that the vessel is the flagship for a contingent of “about 3,500” Marines and sailors. Two drones targeting the US embassy in Baghdad were intercepted by air defences, security officials said, the first such attack against the diplomatic mission in 10 days.
A direct Iranian missile strike on a village in central Israel wounded 11 people and left a massive crater, medics said, as the Middle East war entered its second month.
Hundreds of Israeli protesters gathered in Tel Aviv and some other cities to protest the war in the Middle East.
