SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
Thank you for joining our live coverage of the war in the Middle East.
Here are the latest developments:
- US President Donald Trump claims to have made progress in talks with Tehran but also threatened to “completely obliterate” Iranian energy assets, including major oil hub Kharg Island and “possibly all” desalination plants, if a deal is not reached “shortly”. Trump said the US was in “serious discussions with a new, and more reasonable, regime to end our military operations in Iran”.
- Iran has denied claims it is discussing a ceasefire with the Trump administration, saying there have been “no negotiations” with the US since the war began. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baqaei said the US submitted a request to negotiate, accompanied by a set of proposals for a ceasefire deal, but “all our efforts and capabilities are devoted to defending Iran’s essence”.
- The United Nations has urged Israel to repeal a law approving the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis, after the bill was passed in parliament overnight. It comes as Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said the war was “definitely beyond the halfway point”, while he orders his military to further expand its operations in southern Lebanon.
- Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has accepted that halving the fuel excise won’t completely alleviate increased costs driven by war in the Middle East, conceding Australia was “not immune from what has happened”. The change to the fuel excise will see a 26 cent reduction to each litre of petrol sold. The measure will come into effect tomorrow, but may take until the weekend for petrol stations to pass along the saving.
Iran’s foreign minister has insisted the Islamic Republic is only targeting US troops stationed in Gulf states, despite Iranian attacks killing civilians, including numerous migrant workers, across the region.
“Our operations are aimed at enemy aggressors who have no respect for Arabs or Iranians, nor can provide any security,” Seyed Abbas Araghchi said on X, who added that Iran considers Saudi Arabia – which has been subject to Iranian attacks – a “brotherly nation”.
He also said it was “high time” for the Gulf states to eject US forces.
Araghchi shared a photo purportedly showing damage to an American E3 Sentry command and control aircraft at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, AP reported.
Iran hit a fully laden Kuwaiti oil tanker in the anchorage area of Dubai’s port, damaging the hull and starting a fire on board in an escalation of attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf.
The drone strike on the Al-Salmi, a Kuwait-flagged very large crude carrier, marks one of the most significant attacks on a vessel to date, targeting a fully loaded ship just 31 nautical miles north-west of Dubai, in a busy area used by ships waiting to transit the Strait of Hormuz.
“Emergency response and firefighting teams were immediately mobilised and are currently working to contain and control the situation in close coordination with the relevant authorities,” state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp said in a statement, adding that the attack – which happened just after midnight, Dubai time – may have resulted in an “oil spill in the surrounding waters”.
All 24 crew members were safe, the Dubai Media Office said in a post on X.
Oil pushed higher after the tanker attack, with West Texas Intermediate futures jumping almost 4 per cent toward $US107 ($156) a barrel.
Bloomberg
Three United Nations peacekeepers from Indonesia have been killed in two separate incidents in southern Lebanon after a bloody weekend in which Lebanese journalists and medics were also killed in Israeli strikes.
Two peacekeepers were killed on Monday after an explosion from an unknown origin destroyed their vehicle near Bani Hayyan in southern Lebanon, the UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL said in a statement. Two other soldiers were wounded in the blast.
Another Indonesian soldier was killed overnight Sunday into Monday when a projectile exploded near one of the group’s positions close to the southern Lebanese village of Adchit al-Qusayr. Another peacekeeper was critically injured at the time.
“These are two separate incidents and we are investigating them as two separate incidents,” said UNIFIL’s spokesperson Kandice Ardiel.
In response to the first death, Indonesia said any harm to peacekeepers is unacceptable, while reiterating its condemnation “of Israel’s attacks in southern Lebanon”.
Reuters
Israel has the right to make laws on capital punishment, the country’s ambassador to Australia says, following the passage of laws overnight approving the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis.
“Just like in the United States, in Japan and in India, which have capital punishment, Israel has the right, as a sovereign state, to decide … capital punishment,” Israel’s ambassador to Australia Hillel Newman told the National Press Club this afternoon.
The passage of the bill on Monday, Israeli time, marked the culmination of a years-long drive by the far-right to escalate punishment for Palestinians convicted of nationalistic offences against Israelis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to the Knesset to vote for the bill in person.
The law makes death by hanging the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of nationalistic killings. It also gives Israeli courts the option of imposing the death penalty on Israeli citizens convicted on similar charges – language that legal experts say effectively confines those who can be sentenced to death to Palestinian citizens of Israel and excludes Jewish citizens.
Iran’s vice president has warned US President Donald Trump that if US soldiers set foot on Iran’s key oil terminal, Kharg Island, they’ll be killed.
Trump today threatened to “completely obliterate” all of Iran’s energy assets, including the major oil hub on Kharg Island. Trump said earlier this month that the US military had bombed Iranian miliary sites on the island.
“Trump can only decide about sending troops to Khark (sic) but when it comes to bringing them back, the decision is no longer his. Because no one returns home from hell,” said Mohammad Reza Aref on X, in a post which included imagery of coffins draped in the US flag.
The island is Iran’s primary oil export hub and its economic lifeline. In a Truth Social post two weeks ago, Trump said he had decided not to attack the island’s oil infrastructure “for reasons of decency” but threatened to do it if Iran did not ensure clear passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
The Israeli ambassador to Australia has said his country has never unjustly targeted journalists in conflict and that terrorists have pretended to be journalists to protect themselves, during an address to the National Press Club in Canberra.
“There is a campaign against Israel about the amount of journalists that have been killed and whether they’ve been intentionally killed, etc. So let’s state the fact: Israel has never targeted a journalist just for being a journalist,” Hillel Newman said.
“The truth behind it is that Hamas and Hezbollah guise themselves as press and remain terrorist operatives. I can send to any journalist who is interested, lists of dozens of journalists, so-called journalists who were actually, or who were, operatives of Hamas and Hezbollah,” he said.
The International Federation of Journalists has reported that 261 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. The organisation reports that dozens have been injured, with a reported mortality rate of 10 per cent for the profession in the area.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong has told the Labor caucus that Australia opposed “the death penalty in all instances”, after Israel passed laws that made the default punishment for a Palestinian convicted of murdering an Israeli death by hanging.
Wong was asked about Israel’s new laws, which have been widely condemned by the international community and rights groups as discriminatory and inhumane, in the Labor caucus meeting today.
She pointed to a joint statement Australia signed alongside France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom that opposed the measure.
“We are particularly worried about the de facto discriminatory character of the bill,” the statement said. “The adoption of this bill would risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles.”
The Israeli ambassador to Australia has said “removing” Iran and its proxies is the “ultimate remedy” to maintaining energy and supply chain security in the Strait of Hormuz.
“The Australian government has joined others in the international community in condemning Tehran’s actions aimed at closing the Strait of Hormuz and intentionally creating global instability,” Hillel Newman said.
“Efforts are being extended to make sure that the energy concerns are temporary and minimal, diversifying energy sources, opening new channels of supply chains and deterring future attacks in the Strait. The ultimate remedy, though, is removing the ultimate threat: Iran and its proxies,” the ambassador told the National Press Club this afternoon.
Newman was announced as Israel’s ambassador to Australia earlier this month, after serving in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
NSW needs more electric vehicles, more charging stations and more renewable energy to protect against shocks to the economy from war in the Middle East, the state’s premier has declared.
Energy independence will be a feature of the upcoming state budget and a focus of the next election campaign, Premier Chris Minns said.
“I think you’d be a mug to believe this is the only conflict we’re going to see in the Middle East, and we have to take long-term measures to electrify our economy so that we’re not as dependent on Middle Eastern oil,” he said.
The premier announced this morning an easing of restrictions for road freight, allowing truck drivers to transport heavier and longer loads and, where possible, reduce or remove curfews to load and unload at night.
The longer trucks use less diesel per ton of load, the government says.
At 7am on Tuesday, 61 petrol stations in NSW were out of all fuel, and 247 were out of diesel – that’s 10 per cent of all petrol stations in the state.
The premier didn’t give specific examples of what measures to electrify the economy would be included in the next state budget, but said electric vehicles should be available for everyone – not just “for snobs that live in the eastern suburbs”.
“It’s got to be available to regular mums and dads, and that means, particularly if they’re travelling and driving for work they don’t have range anxiety, they can get access to a recharger.”
The close vote by the Reserve Bank to lift interest rates at its March meeting came down to a debate about the economic and inflation fallout from the war in Iran.
Minutes released today of the March 17 meeting – at which the bank split 5-4 to lift the cash rate to 4.1 per cent – showed those backing a rate increase feared that inflation would lift in an economy that, heading into the war, was already growing relatively strongly.
The bank estimated that oil around $US100 a barrel would mean inflation would reach about 5 per cent by June – three quarters of a percentage point higher than the RBA had previously forecast.
But the minutes also show bank members concerned that the spike in inflation and the supply chain problems caused by the war would ultimately lead to a slowdown in the economy.
“Members agreed that the reduction in oil supply and associated higher prices would probably also reduce economic activity domestically and internationally,” the minutes showed.
“However, this would depend on the evolution of the current conflict in the Middle East, how various sectors responded to the resulting reallocation of income and how the conflict affected domestic sentiment and global demand.
“Members agreed that it was not possible to be confident about either the future evolution of the conflict or how these various factors would play out over the longer term.”
