The scale of the violence unfolding across the Middle East reached new heights over the weekend, with fighting in Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Gaza, and the occupied West Bank unfolding simultaneously. Against this backdrop, global oil prices crossed $100 per barrel, reflecting the extraordinary breadth of a conflict with no clear end in sight.
Israeli strikes on oil storage facilities in and around Tehran killed four workers and left the capital shrouded in black smoke. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards threatened to drive oil to $200 per barrel if the attacks continued, while Iranian forces launched fresh barrages against Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
In Lebanon, Israeli strikes killed four people in a hotel blast in Beirut and 12 more in attacks on the country’s southern regions. Lebanese health authorities reported at least 394 killed since fighting began, while roughly 300,000 people had been displaced. In the occupied West Bank, three Palestinians were killed by settlers, and an Israeli airstrike killed at least two people in Gaza.
A US service member died from wounds sustained in an Iranian attack in Saudi Arabia, the seventh American fatality of the conflict. Reports also emerged that Russia had been providing Iran with intelligence to help target US forces in the region — a development with serious implications for the war’s trajectory.
Iran’s clerical assembly simultaneously appointed Mojtaba Khamenei as the country’s new supreme leader. The selection of the late leader’s son was viewed by many as a consolidation of hardline power within Iran’s government, reducing the likelihood of meaningful diplomatic engagement and potentially prolonging a conflict that had already spread to six countries.