Μake us preferred on Google An adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, said on Thursday that Tehran could widen the Middle East war to the Indian Ocean if the United States or Israel attacks it again.
In a video released by Iran’s Fars news agency, Yahya Rahim Safavi said the conflict has already moved from the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea, and that further fighting could push the front even further, toward “the Indian Ocean and perhaps beyond.”
Safavi, a former commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, also warned that if Washington resumes hostilities, Iran and its allies could step up attacks on global energy supplies around the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, where a new front could open.
According to Al Jazeera, an Iranian official said the country’s military has drawn up plans for a worst-case scenario in case US-Israeli bombing starts again. Oil prices climbed about 3% as the threats emerged.
Tehran is also applying pressure on the diplomatic front. Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Iran has given the United States five days to accept its conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. He said those terms were passed to the US during the United Nations meeting, and that the strait will stay closed, and talks will not take place, unless Washington agrees.
In Washington, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said reaching a deal to end the nearly seven-month war will take sustained effort, adding that President Donald Trump has many options.
The warnings follow a tense week at the UN General Assembly. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian used his speech on Wednesday to say Tehran would never “bend at the knee,” and accused Washington of terrorism over the killing of former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the war. A day earlier, Trump told the assembly he was considering whether to “annihilate” Iran, while also praising renewed talks between the two sides’ negotiators.
Meanwhile, US Central Command said its naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz has now redirected 115 commercial vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports.
