Saturday: Five things that happened todayKharg Island strikes raises stakes in war between the US and IranUS president Donald Trump has said the US will strike Iran “very hard over the next week”Iran’s foreign minister says his country will respond to any attack on Iranian energy facilities by targeting US companies in the regionIsrael and Lebanon are expected to hold direct talks in the coming daysIran has allowed some Indian vessels through Strait of Hormuz, says ambassadorKey Reads
Ronan McGreevy – 1 hour ago
US citizens should leave Iraq immediately, the US embassy in Baghdad said in an updated security alert on Saturday, following an overnight missile attack on the embassy’s building.
“US citizens choosing to remain in Iraq are strongly encouraged to reconsider in light of the significant threat posed by Iran-aligned terrorist militia groups,” the embassy said – Reuters
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi:
Last night, they have attacked Kharg Island and Abu Musa Island with the artillery rocket system, HIMARS as they call it, which is a low-range rocket system.
And they have done it from the soil of our neighbors. This is crystal clear that… pic.twitter.com/P7LblrSMV1
— Clash Report (@clashreport) March 14, 2026
Ronan McGreevy – 1 hour ago
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has warned that another round of Iranian missiles has been detected – the sixth wave of strikes targeting the country on Saturday.
Three rounds came within less than two hours earlier this afternoon.
Defensive systems are operating to intercept the threat, the IDF says, before asking the public in affected areas to seek shelter.
Ronan McGreevy – 2 hours ago
Prolonged gas shortage for Ireland could cost €4.6 billion a month
The energy crisis arising out of the war in the Middle East is a timely reminder of Ireland’s vulnerabilities.
A prolonged closure of Ireland’s sub-sea gas infrastructure could cost the state €4.6 billion a month, according to this report by Martin Wall and Jack Horgan-Jones.
Ronan McGreevy – 2 hours ago
Iran vows revenge for Kharg Island attacks
Iran’s foreign minister says his country will respond to any attack on Iranian energy facilities by targeting US companies in the region, according to the Tasnim News Agency, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps.
Abbas Araghchi said: “If Iranian facilities are targeted, our forces will target facilities of American companies in the region or companies in which the United States has shares.
“We will definitely respond to these attacks, while at the same time acting with caution so that densely populated areas are not targeted.”
It comes hours after the US military targeted Kharg Island – critical to Iran as it’s thought about 90 per cent of its oil exports pass through the island.
The US reportedly targeted air defences, a naval base, an airport control tower and a helicopter hangar – it added there had been no damage to oil infrastructure.
Ronan McGreevy – 3 hours ago
‘No one has done more with less than the Iranians’
The Iranian response to the US-Israel attacks has caught the Trump Administration off guard.
Former US officials and military experts said Iranian forces had been able to use a combination of intelligence, lessons from Russia, satellite imagery and proximity to hit US bases, energy facilities and other strategic targets across the Gulf.
“No one has done more with less than the Iranians,” said Seth Krummrich, former chief of staff at US Soccent, the special forces command responsible for operations in the Middle East. You can read the analysis here.
Ronan McGreevy – 3 hours ago
One of Donald Trump’s close White House advisers has called for the US to “find the off-ramp” in its conflict with Iran, the first public signal of discontent over the war from a senior figure in his administration.
“This is a good time to declare victory and get out,” David Sacks, Trump’s AI and crypto tsar, said on the All-In podcast he co-hosts. Such a move “is clearly what the markets would like to see”, he added in an article quoted by the Financial Times.
In his comments on All-In, Sacks raised specific concerns about the consequences of further attacks by the US on such infrastructure, including the prospect of nuclear war.
“You are seeing a faction of people, I would say largely but not exclusively in the Republican Party, who want to escalate the war,” he said.
If more Iranian energy infrastructure gets hit, “they could continue to target the oil and gas infrastructure across the Gulf states . . . that would be a much worse outcome”, he added.
Further escalation “could render the Gulf almost uninhabitable”, Sacks said, mentioning Saudi Arabia in particular. “That would be a truly catastrophic scenario.”
Sacks, a longtime critic of foreign intervention, who has opposed further US involvement in the war in Ukraine, singled out Israel as the biggest potential flashpoint.
“If this war continues for weeks or months, then Israel could just be destroyed,” he said. “Their air defences could become exhausted . . . And then you have to worry about Israel escalating the war by contemplating using a nuclear weapon.”
‘Even the George W. Bush administration, when they were preparing to invade Iraq, they at least had the common decency to lie to Americans’: Irish Times contributor Mark O’Connell looks at how White House videos are capturing the ‘Brain Rot War’
Tap on the link to read Mark’s… pic.twitter.com/KVO9Ml3oka
— The Irish Times (@IrishTimes) March 14, 2026
Ronan McGreevy – 4 hours ago
India seeks to open the Strait of Hormuz for its ships
India has sought safe passage for 22 of its vessels stranded west of the Strait of Hormuz, a foreign affairs ministry spokesperson said on Saturday, after Iran allowed a few Indian ships to sail through, in a rare exception to the blockade.
Randhir Jaiswal told a press conference that India has stayed in touch with all major parties in the Middle East – including Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran, the US and Israel – to convey its priorities, particularly on energy security.
Tehran’s ambassador to India, Muhammad Fathali, confirmed that Iran has allowed some Indian vessels to sail through the Strait of Hormuz. He was speaking on broadcaster India Today’s conclave in New Delhi.
Since the United States and Israel launched a bombing campaign on Iran, Tehran has largely halted traffic through the strait, which runs past its coast and through which around 20 per cent of global oil and seaborne liquefied natural gas is supplied.
The blockade has triggered India’s worst gas crisis in decades with the government cutting supplies for industries to shield households from any shortage of cooking gas – Reuters
It’s crystal clear now that Trump has lost control of this war. He badly misjudged Iran’s ability to retaliate. The region is on fire.
1/ I’m going to explain to you in this🧵what I’ve learned – in part from closed door briefings – about the four biggest current crises.
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) March 14, 2026
Ronan McGreevy – 4 hours ago
Israel and Lebanon to hold talks
Israel and Lebanon are expected to hold talks in the coming days, their first since the start of the Iran war that has drawn Lebanon deeper into conflict, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Saturday.
US president Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will be involved in the talks that may be held in Paris or in Cyprus, with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s confidant Ron Dermer leading the Israeli delegation, Haaretz said – Reuters
Ronan McGreevy – 4 hours ago
The Palestinian, Iran-aligned militant group Hamas has called on Iran to not target neighbouring countries, while still reaffirming Tehran’s right to respond to the US-Israeli attacks.
This is the first time the group has publicly commented on Iranian policies. It has expressed solidarity with Iran during the war but appeared to steer clear from threatening any retaliatory actions so far.
“While the group affirms Iran’s right to respond to this aggression by all available means in accordance with international norms and laws, it calls upon our brothers in Iran not to target neighbouring countries,” it said.
It also called on all countries in the region and international organisations to immediately stop the war.
Israel and Hamas agreed on a ceasefire in Gaza that went into effect in October, but there have been regular outbreaks of violence since then. While Israeli attacks on Gaza declined at the beginning of the war with Iran, they have since begun to rise.
The Lebanese Iran-aligned Hizbullah, meanwhile, opened fire on Israel on March 2nd to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader at the start of the war. Israel has since then pounded Lebanon and targeted the group.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis, which launched a military campaign against ships they perceived as affiliated with Israel in the Red Sea during the war in Gaza, have also expressed strong solidarity with Tehran. They have not yet threatened to resume attacks.
Some oil export operations at the UAE’s port of Fujairah have been suspended after an Iranian drone attack this morning -Reuters
Multiple areas of the port, a key installation and the UAE’s only oil export terminal outside of the Strait of Hormuz, were seen burning. pic.twitter.com/3ybiql7Aax
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) March 14, 2026
Oil tankers and ships have been lining up in the Strait of Hormuz. Photograph: Altaf Qadri/AP
Ronan McGreevy – 5 hours ago
Kharg Island strikes raises stakes in war between the US and Iran
President Donald Trump said military facilities on the Gulf Kharg Island had been “obliterated,” adding that he chose not to hit oil infrastructure “for reasons of decency.”
He threatened to do just that should Iran “do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz”.
Iran reacted by warning it will target American-linked oil and energy facilities in the Middle East if its own petroleum infrastructure is attacked. Iranian media said all oil-industry workers on the island, which sits about 25km (16 miles) off the mainland, are safe and unharmed.
The strike on is likely to raise fears of more oil and natural gas supply disruptions in the region. Brent crude closed above $100 a barrel on Friday and is at its highest level in almost four years.
“All oil, economic, and energy facilities belonging to oil companies in the region that are partly owned by the United States or that co-operate with the United States will be immediately destroyed and reduced to ashes” if Iran’s energy and economic assets are hit, the country’s Fars News Agency reported, citing the central military command – Bloomberg
BREAKING:
Iran has struck the UAE’s port of Fujairah, which is one of the most strategically important ports in the Middle East.
– The port provides a strategic backup export route if Hormuz is threatened or closed.
– Oil can reach global markets without ships passing… pic.twitter.com/cyCiz1vC9v
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) March 14, 2026
This video grab taken from images posted on social media shows smoke billowing from the US embassy in Baghdad. Photograph: AFP via Getty Images
Sarah Burns – 6 hours ago
Sinn Féin motion on soaring fuel costs to be debated in Dáil next week
Sinn Féin’s finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty has confirmed that he will bring a motion before the Dáil next week demanding urgent action to tackle the soaring cost of home heating oil, petrol and diesel.
The Private Members’ motion, which will be debated on Wednesday, calls on the Government to immediately intervene to reduce fuel prices and scrap planned tax increases on home heating oil.
Doherty said the debate will give Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael an opportunity to “finally act” to protect workers and families facing severe financial pressure.
“Workers and families have been struggling through an unrelenting cost of living crisis and the rapid rise in the cost of petrol, diesel and home heating oil is making an already difficult situation far worse,” the Donegal TD said.
“Households are under enormous pressure and yet Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael continue to sit on their hands while costs spiral.”
Doherty said the Sinn Féin motion will highlight the growing hardship being experienced across the State.
“Record numbers of households are already struggling to pay their energy bills, with hundreds of thousands in arrears and many more on the brink,” he added.
“The number of people at risk of poverty has also increased.”
The Sinn Féin motion calls on the Government to scrap planned tax increases on home heating oil, due to take effect on May 1st, and to reduce the cost of petrol, diesel and home heating oil by implementing the party’s Mineral Oil Tax (Emergency Cost of Living Reduction) Bill 2026.
Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty is to bring energy motion before the Dáil next week. Photograph: Stephen Collins/Collins Photos
Sarah Burns – 7 hours ago
Some oil loading operations suspend in Fujairah following drone attack
Some oil-loading operations have been suspended in the United Arab Emirates’ Fujairah emirate, a major bunkering hub and crude export terminal, after a drone attack and fire on Saturday, industry and trade sources have said.
The suspension comes hours after the US attacked military targets on Iran’s Kharg Island oil export terminal and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards responded by saying that US interests in the UAE – including ports, docks and military locations – were legitimate targets.
Fujairah, outside the Strait of Hormuz, is the outlet for about one million barrels per day of the UAE’s Murban crude oil – a volume equal to about one per cent of world demand.
Earlier this week, the International Energy Agency said the world was facing its biggest ever oil supply crisis due to the effective closing of the Strait of Hormuz, a channel along the Iranian coast, since the US and Israel began airstrikes on Iran on February 28th, with the UAE among producers forced to cut oil output.
The fire in Fujairah occurred after debris fell during the interception of a drone, but no injuries were reported, the emirate’s media office said.
Civil defence forces are handling the incident to contain the fire, it added.
Authorities did not provide any information about the suspension of operations.
Abu Dhabi state oil giant ADNOC, which operates in the emirate, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Smoke and flames rise from an energy installation in the Gulf emirate of Fujairah on Saturday. Smoke could be seen rising from the direction of a major UAE energy installation, in what appeared to be the latest strike targeting the Gulf’s petroleum facilities hours after the US struck Iran’s Kharg Island. Photograph: AFP via Getty Images
Sarah Burns – 7 hours ago
Smoke rises from the direction of an energy installation in the Gulf emirate of Fujairah on Saturday. Smoke could be seen rising from the direction of a major UAE energy installation, in what appeared to be the latest strike targeting the Gulf’s petroleum facilities hours after the US struck Iran’s Kharg Island. Photograph: AFP via Getty Images 
Smoke rises from the direction of an energy installation in the Gulf emirate of Fujairah on Saturday. Smoke could be seen rising from the direction of a major UAE energy installation, in what appeared to be the latest strike targeting the Gulf’s petroleum facilities hours after the US struck Iran’s Kharg Island. Photograph: AFP via Getty Images 
Smoke rises from the direction of an energy installation in the Gulf emirate of Fujairah on Saturday. Smoke could be seen rising from the direction of a major UAE energy installation, in what appeared to be the latest strike targeting the Gulf’s petroleum facilities hours after the US struck Iran’s Kharg Island. Photograph: AFP via Getty Images
Sarah Burns – 7 hours ago
More than 90 Iranian military targets struck, says US Central Command
US forces executed a large-scale precision strike on Kharg Island in Iran on Friday night, the US Central Command said on Saturday.
“US Forces successfully struck more than 90 Iranian military targets,” it said.
Sarah Burns – 7 hours ago
Mark O’Connell looks at how White House videos are capturing the ‘Brain Rot War’. Video: Enda O’Dowd
Sarah Burns – 8 hours ago
Iran has allowed some Indian vessels through Strait of Hormuz, says ambassador
Iran has allowed some Indian vessels to sail through the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran’s ambassador to India, Mohammad Fathali, said on Saturday, confirming a rare exception to the blockade that has disrupted global energy supplies.
Fathali did not confirm the number of vessels that have been provided safe passage. He was speaking at broadcaster India Today’s conclave in New Delhi.
Since the United States and Israel launched a bombing campaign on Iran, Tehran has largely halted traffic through the strait, which runs past its coast and through which around 20 per cent of global oil and seaborne liquefied natural gas is supplied.
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Sarah Burns – 8 hours ago
The US struck military sites on Kharg Island, from which Iran exports almost all its oil, for the first time overnight.
US president Donald Trump said military facilities on the Gulf island had been “obliterated,” adding that he chose not to hit oil infrastructure “for reasons of decency”.
He threatened to do just that should Iran “do anything to interfere with the free and safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz”.
Iran reacted on Saturday morning by warning it will target American-linked oil and energy facilities in the Middle East if its own petroleum infrastructure is attacked. Iranian media said all oil-industry workers on the island, which sits about 25km off the mainland, are safe and unharmed.
“All oil, economic, and energy facilities belonging to oil companies in the region that are partly owned by the United States or that co-operate with the United States will be immediately destroyed and reduced to ashes” if Iran’s energy and economic assets are hit, the country’s Fars News Agency reported, citing the central military command.
The outlet said more than 15 explosions shook Kharg Island, with the targets including air-defence systems, a naval base, an airport control tower and a helicopter hangar. It didn’t specify the scale of the damage.
In the United Arab Emirates, some oil operations at Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman were suspended after a drone attack and fire on Saturday morning. Dubai authorities said debris from an interception hit the facade of a building in a central part of the city. “No fire occurred and no injuries were reported,” the Dubai Media Office said.
Iranian media reported more attacks on Tehran early Saturday, while Iran’s military said it again targeted Israel overnight and a base near Abu Dhabi that hosts US troops.
Rescue workers search for survivors in the rubble after a strike in southern Tehran, Iran. Photograph: Sajjad Safari/AP 
An apartment building damaged in a missile strike in Tehran on Thursday. Photograph: Arash Khamooshi/The New York Times
Sarah Burns – 9 hours ago
As smoke rises over Tehran from latest strikes, Trump announced that ‘we’re going to cut off all trade with Spain’ from their refusal to allow bases to be used.
Sarah Burns – 9 hours ago
British government looking to provide ‘targeted’ support to offset impact of surging energy costs
The British government is looking to provide “targeted” support for poorer households to offset the impact of surging energy costs due to the conflict in the Middle East, finance minister Rachel Reeves has said.
Reeves told the Times newspaper the government was looking at options to help those vulnerable to sharp rises in energy prices, especially those who relied on heating oil, but she ruled out universal help for all households, saying it would be unaffordable.
The Labour government, trailing in the polls to the populist Reform UK party, has come under pressure from opponents to cap regulated household energy tariffs – due for review in late May – and to scrap a planned rise in vehicle fuel duty in September.
“I have found the money and we’ve worked through with MPs (lawmakers) and others a response for people who are not protected by the energy price cap. We’re giving greater support to those who really need it,” she said of the plan to help households who rely on heating oil.
More than a million households in Britain use oil for heating, particularly in rural areas where connection to the gas grid is not available. The highest concentration is in Northern Ireland, where almost half of households rely solely on the fuel.
UK chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves during a roundtable with petrol retailers and energy suppliers, hosted at 11 Downing Street, Westminster, on Friday. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/PA Wire
Sarah Burns – 9 hours ago
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday that US interests in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), including ports, docks and military locations, are legitimate targets after US forces attacked Iranian islands, Iranian state media reported.
In its statement, IRGC urged residents in UAE to evacuate ports, docks and US military shelters to avoid civilian casualties.
Sarah Burns – 9 hours ago
Iran is ‘totally defeated and wants a deal’, claims Trump
US president Donald Trump has claimed Iran is “totally defeated and wants a deal”.
In a post on Truthsocial over recent hours, Trump said: “The Fake News Media hates to report how well the United States Military has done against Iran, which is totally defeated and wants a deal – But not a deal that I would accept! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT.”
US president Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One as he departs Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Friday. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Sarah Burns – 10 hours ago
The US embassy in the Iraqi capital Baghdad was hit in a missiles attack, Iraqi security sources have told Reuters on Saturday.
The attack caused smoke to rise from the embassy’s building, the sources said, without providing details on the damage.
The US embassy headquarters in Iraq pictured last week. Photograph: Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP via Getty Images
Sarah Burns – 10 hours ago
Some oil -loading operations in the port of UAE’s Fujairah, outside the Strait of Hormuz, have been suspended after a drone attack and fire on Saturday morning, Bloomberg News has reported.
A Jewish school in Amsterdam was damaged in an explosion that the city’s mayor has described as a deliberate attack against the Jewish community, Dutch news agency ANP reported.
The explosion, which happened early on Saturday, caused limited damage, Mayor Femke Halsema told ANP.
Elsewhere, explosions rocked Iraq’s capital Baghdad on Saturday after two strikes targeted the powerful Iran-backed group Kataeb Hizbullah, killing two members including a “key figure”, security sources told AFP.
In Lebanon, at least 12 medical personnel were killed in an Israeli strike on a healthcare centre in the town of Borj Qalaouiya in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese state news agency reported, citing the health ministry.
Emergency personnel work at the site of an Israeli air strike that targeted an apartment building in the southern Lebanese town of Haret Saida, on the outskirts of Sidon, on March 14th, 2026. Photograph: MAHMOUD ZAYYAT/AFP via Getty Images 
The site of an overnight Israeli air strike that targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs, on March 14th, 2026. Photograph: AFP via Getty Images
Israeli strikes have killed more than 100 children in Lebanon, according to the latest data from the Lebanese health ministry. A total of 773 people have been killed since Israel’s first strikes on the country on March 2nd, with a further 1,933 people wounded, the ministry said in its daily report.
It said 103 children had now been killed in the strikes, and a further 326 children have been wounded. – Guardian
Kharg Island is a key hub for oil exports
Kharg Island is the hub for 90 per cent of Iran’s oil exports and has long been seen as a key vulnerability that would provoke a severe response by Tehran if attacked.
Iran, which ramped up oil output in the run-up to the February 28th launch of the war by Israel and the US, has continued to ship oil at a rate of 1.1 million to 1.5 million barrels per day, TankerTracker.com and Kpler data show.
Kharg sits 26km (16 miles) from Iran’s coast, more than 480km northwest of the Strait of Hormuz, in waters deep enough to enable the docking of tankers that are too large to approach the mainland’s shallow coastal waters.
An infographic titled “Kharg Island” created in Ankara, Turkey. Photograph: Elif Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images
Kharg has storage capacity of roughly 30 million barrels, and held about 18 million barrels of crude as of early March, according to a JP Morgan report citing Kpler data.
The last time the island came under significant fire was during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. The Iraqi military, under Saddam Hussein, conducted heavy bombing raids on the island’s oil infrastructure at the time, causing extensive damage. But Iran was able to rebuild the facilities. – Agencies
In response, Iran’s Armed Forces Unified Combatant warned that any attack on Iran’s oil and energy infrastructure would lead to attacks on energy infrastructure owned by oil companies co-operating with the US in the region, Iranian media reported.
The military’s Al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said in a statement cited by Iranian media that oil and energy infrastructure belonging to firms that co-operated with the United States would “immediately be destroyed and turned into a pile of ashes” if Iran’s energy facilities were attacked.
President Donald Trump said US forces had “obliterated” military targets on Iran’s Kharg Island – hours after the American military said it has ordered 2,500 Marines and an amphibious assault ship to the Middle East.
Kharg Island is the primary terminal that handles Iran’s oil exports, and Trump warned that the island’s oil infrastructure could be next.
Announcing the action in a social media post, the US president said: “Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island.
“For reasons of decency, I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island. However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision.”
“Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island… Iran has NO ability to defend anything that we… pic.twitter.com/2iEzCOyA3P
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 13, 2026
Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported at least 15 explosions with thick smoke rising over Kharg Island.
It said the strikes targeted an air defence facility, a naval base, the airport control tower and an offshore oil company’s helicopter hangar, adding no oil infrastructure was damaged in the attack. – Associated Press