Trump says war could end in two, three weeks as Israel strikes Tehran
· Citizen
Tehran was rocked by a fresh wave of explosions on Wednesday, as US President Donald Trump said the war with Iran could be over in two or three weeks.
The conflict began when the United States and Israel launched airstrikes across Iran that killed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, quickly mushrooming into a regional war that has threatened to torpedo the global economy.
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Trump, whose statements on the war have swung from combative to conciliatory, said late on Tuesday that the fighting could be over in “two weeks, maybe three”.
The White House said he would give “an important update on Iran” to the nation at 9:00 pm Wednesday (0100 GMT Thursday).
Tehran has insisted there are no ongoing negotiations, and that it has not responded to a reported 15-point proposal from Washington to end the war.
But Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the Islamic republic had the “necessary will” to end the war, provided its enemies guaranteed it would not flare up again.
With diplomatic efforts uncertain, Iranian media said the capital Tehran was hit by strikes Wednesday, as well as steel complexes in central and southwest Iran, causing “significant damage and destruction”.
An AFP journalist said strikes hit near the former US embassy — which now a museum known as the “Den of Spies” and has become a symbol of the decades-long animosity between Tehran and Washington.
The Israeli military confirmed it had carried out strikes on the capital on Wednesday. Meanwhile, emergency services said an Iranian missile attack wounded 14 people including an 11-year-old girl.
Israel also said its air defences had responded to a missile fired from Yemen — the third attack by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels since they entered the war over the weekend.
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‘Nobody knows what’s happening’
Thousands of people have been killed throughout the region during the conflict, which has displaced millions more from their homes.
In Lebanon, seven people were killed in strikes around south Beirut, the health ministry said Wednesday, while the Israeli military said it had struck a senior Hezbollah commander.
A Lebanese security source and a Hezbollah source both told AFP that the strike had killed Hezbollah’s top commander for Iraq military affairs.
AFP correspondents at the site saw a blackened, debris-strewn street.
“Nobody knows what’s happening,” resident Hassan Jalwan told AFP, adding that “displaced people have been sleeping in the open” in the area.
Lebanon was drawn into the war on March 2 when Tehran-backed militant group Hezbollah launched attacks on Israel.
Israel responded with broad strikes and a ground offensive that the Lebanese health ministry says has left more than 1,200 dead.
US allies in the Gulf have also been pulled into the war, with Iran carrying out retaliatory attacks on nations it says have been launchpads for strikes.
A Bangladeshi national was killed on Wednesday by falling shrapnel from an intercepted drone in the United Arab Emirates.
Meanwhile strikes in Kuwait caused a large fire in fuel tanks at its international airport, Bahrain’s interior ministry said a fire broke out at a business facility, and Saudi Arabia said several drones were intercepted.
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A tanker was also hit in the waters off Qatar, a British maritime security agency said, reporting damage but no casualties.
Meanwhile a drone strike caused a massive fire at the storage facilities of an engine oil firm in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan.
“Every day, we hear the sound of drones,” Waad Abdulrazaq, a 31-year-old truck driver, told AFP near Iraq’s Erbil international airport.
“We hear them in the morning, and we hear them at night. We can no longer sleep or live in peace.”
Economic fallout
Iran has maintained a chokehold on the vital Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of global oil normally passes, sending shockwaves through global energy markets.
Average US gasoline prices topped $4 a gallon for the first time in four years this week, while European inflation spiked and governments around the world started to unveil support measures.
“We’re a small outfit,” driver Nicolas Barthes told AFP at a protest against soaring fuel prices in the French city of Toulouse. “The additional diesel cost for me this month is €15,000, and we’re not managing to pass all of that on.”
Optimism sparked by Trump’s comments on the end of the war pushed oil prices down Wednesday, and stock markets rallied in Europe and Asia.
But Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at Wealth Club, said prices were still about 50 percent above pre-war levels, showing “scepticism still remains about Trump’s claims of progress”.
Washington has not said who it is speaking with in Iran, which has denied it is in talks.
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Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Al Jazeera he still receives messages from US envoy Steve Witkoff, “directly, as before, and this does not mean that we are in negotiations”.
Trump threatened earlier this week that if Iran didn’t agree to a deal, US forces would “obliterate” its oil wells, its main Kharg Island export terminal, and possibly water desalination plants.
Separately, the UN warned that Iran and countries across the Middle East are using the war as an excuse to clamp down on rights and limit media freedoms.