ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said late on Saturday they had launched a missile salvo at US forces stationed at a major base in Saudi Arabia’s Al-Kharj.

The Guards said the Prince Sultan Air Base was being used to equip “F-35 and F-16 fighter jets and is the storage place for fuel tankers”.

While there has been no immediate confirmation of the attack from Saudi Arabia, the kingdom’s defence ministry said earlier it intercepted six ballistic missiles headed towards Al-Kharj.

Saudi Arabia has previously said it has intercepted missiles and drones launched at the base during the ongoing Middle East war.

Riyadh is a close ally of the United States and hosts a large number of its troops. It has repeatedly been attacked by Iran, including strikes on its massive oil industry, but has so far not deployed its military against the Islamic republic.

Saudi authorities have previously condemned Iran’s attacks on its Gulf neighbours as “reprehensible”.

AFP

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Donald Trump has urged the UK and other nations to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz to help secure the key shipping route out of the Middle East.

The US president said he hoped China, France, Japan and South Korea would also send ships to the passage, where a number of tankers are said to have been attacked since the US and Israel mounted their war against Iran a fortnight ago.

Responding to Trump’s comments, the UK Ministry of Defence said it was discussing “a range of options to ensure the security of shipping in the region” with allies.

Tehran has said it will keep blocking the strait – the world’s busiest oil shipping channel through which about 20% of world oil supplies usually pass.

Its effective closure, as well as strikes on shipping and energy infrastructure since the war started, has led to a huge rise in global oil prices.

Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Saturday that “many countries” would be sending warships in conjunction with the US to help keep the strait “open and safe”.

He claimed “100% of Iran’s military capability” had already been destroyed, but that Tehran could still “send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close-range missile somewhere along, or in, this waterway”.

“Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint will send ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a nation that has been totally decapitated.”

He added: “In the meantime, the United States will be bombing the hell out of the shoreline, and continually shooting Iranian Boats and Ships out of the water. One way or the other, we will soon get the Hormuz Strait OPEN, SAFE, and FREE!”

Trump repeated his appeal in a post later on Saturday – extending it to all “the Countries of the World that receive Oil through the Hormuz Strait” – and said the US would provide “a lot” of support to those who participated.

The president has separately threatened to target Iran’s vital oil infrastructure on Kharg Island if its leadership were to “interfere” with ships seeking to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

He said the US had “obliterated” military targets on the small island off Iran’s coast on Friday, calling it “one of the most powerful bombing raids in the history of the Middle East”.

Iran’s military said oil and energy infrastructure belonging to firms working with the US would “immediately be destroyed” should the island’s oil infrastructure be attacked.

Tehran has been stepping up such attacks on energy targets in the Gulf, which have become a key element of its response to US and Israeli strikes. It warned on Thursday that any tanker bound for the US, Israel or its partners was a legitimate target.

The UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said in its latest update on 12 March that 16 ships were reported to have been attacked in and around the strait since the war began on 28 February.

Currently, not even the US Navy is escorting tankers through the narrow shipping lane.

Trump’s message came a week after he said the US did not need the UK to send aircraft carriers to the region and accused Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of seeking to “join wars after we’ve already won”.

He also told the BBC’s US partner CBS that he “couldn’t care less” whether allies could do more to assist with the war, adding: “It’s a little bit late to be sending ships, right? A little bit late.”

He had already criticised Sir Keir for not joining the initial strikes on Iran and refusing at first to allow the US to use UK bases for its joint offensive with Israel – calling him “no Winston Churchill”.

The prime minister later approved “defensive” US action on Iranian missile sites from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, saying Iran’s response had become a threat to Britain.

The UK’s first and only warship set to be present in the region – the Type 45 destroyer HMS Dragon – departed for Cyprus on Tuesday, where it will bolster RAF Akrotiri after it was hit by drone strikes.

The Royal Navy used to keep minesweepers based in Bahrain, but no longer has that capability after it withdrew HMS Middleton.

Ministers have insisted the UK built up an RAF presence in the region before the conflict, with the aim of protecting British military personnel.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said on Saturday that Sir Keir must “rule out deploying British ships just because Trump tells him to”.

“Last week, Trump said he didn’t need Britain’s help because he’d already won this war. So we mustn’t let him push the UK around now. Any decision on the deployment of our armed forces should be made in the UK’s national interest and subject to a vote in Parliament.”

France’s President Emmanuel Macron has previously said he was willing to send warships to the Gulf as “purely an escort mission” – but only once the most “intense phase of the conflict” had ended.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Sri Lanka is repatriating on Friday the remains of 84 Iranian sailors killed when their frigate was sunk nine days ago by a US submarine, the Foreign Ministry said.

The seamen were killed when IRIS Dena was torpedoed on March 4 just off the coast of Sri Lanka, in a move that extended the Middle East war to the Indian Ocean.

“All domestic procedures have been completed, and the Iranians are bringing a chartered aircraft for the repatriation,” spokesman Thushara Rodrigo told AFP.

“The 32 sailors who were rescued by our navy will remain in Sri Lanka.”

The embalmed remains, in sealed boxes, are to be flown out of Sri Lanka from the Mattala International Airport in the south of the country, officials said.

The first batch of 46 bodies was already at the airport by Friday afternoon awaiting an Iranian chartered cargo plane, an official told AFP.

The bodies, which were plucked from the Indian Ocean, were taken to the Karapitiya Hospital in Galle, 115 kilometres (72 miles) south of the capital, where autopsies were carried out.

A local magistrate ordered that the bodies be handed over to the Iranian embassy in Colombo to be sent back to the next of kin.

There was no immediate comment from the Iranian embassy when contacted by AFP.

AFP