IRAN threatened to target recreational and tourist sites worldwide and insisted it was still building missiles. Friday’s show of defiance came nearly three weeks into US-Israeli strikes that have killed a slew of Tehran’s top leaders and hammered its weapons and energy industries. Iran fired on Israel and energy sites in neighbouring Gulf Arab states as many in the region marked one of the holiest days on the Muslim calendar. Iranians were also celebrating the Persian New Year, known as Nowruz, a normally festive holiday that is more subdued this year. With little information coming out of Iran, it was not clear how much damage its arms, nuclear or energy facilities have sustained since the war began February 28 or even who was truly in charge of the country. But Iran has showed it is still capable of attacks that are choking off oil supplies and denting the global economy, raising food and fuel prices far beyond the Middle East. The United States and Israel have offered shifting rationales for the war, from hoping to foment an uprising that topples Iran’s leadership to eliminating its nuclear and missile programmes. There have been no public signs of any such uprising and no end in sight to the war. Iran’s top military spokesman warned on Friday that “parks, recreational areas and tourist destinations” worldwide won’t be safe for Tehran’s enemies. The threat from General Abolfazl Shekarchi renewed concerns that Iran may revert to using militant attacks beyond the Middle East as a pressure tactic. US and Israeli leaders have said that weeks of strikes have decimated Iran’s military.

 

Airstrikes have also killed its supreme leader, the head of its Supreme National Security Council and a raft of other top-ranking military and political leaders. The Israeli military said Friday that Esmail Ahmadi, head of intelligence for the Basij, and internal security force, had been killed by a strike earlier in the week that hit other Basij leaders. On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Iran’s navy was sunk and its air force in tatters, while adding that its ability to produce ballistic missiles had been taken out. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard disputed the missile claim on Friday. “We are producing missiles even during war conditions, which is amazing, and there is no particular problem in stockpiling,” spokesman General Ali Mohammad Naeini was quoted as saying in Iran’s state-run IRAN newspaper. A short time after the statement was released, Iranian state television said Naeini was killed in an airstrike. The country’s new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei also released a rare statement, saying Iran’s enemies need to have their “security” taken away.

 

Khamenei hasn’t been seen since he succeeded his father, the 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the first day of the war. Iran has stepped up its attacks on energy sites in Gulf Arab states after Israel bombed Iran’s massive South Pars offshore natural gas field earlier in the week. Two waves of Iranian drones attacked a Kuwaiti oil refinery early Friday, sparking a fire. The Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery, which can process some 730,000 barrels of oil per day, is one of the largest in the Middle East. It was damaged Thursday in another Iranian attack. Bahrain said a fire broke out after shrapnel from an intercepted projectile landed on a warehouse, and Saudi Arabia reported shooting down multiple drones targeting its oil-rich Eastern Province. Heavy explosions shook Dubai as air defences intercepted incoming fire over the city, where many were observing Eid al-Fitr, the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramzan.