Iran says it will attack any ship trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz conflict news

Ibrahim Jabari, a senior adviser to the commander-in-chief of the IRGC, has reiterated that the Strait of Hormuz is ‘closed’.

Iranian state media reported that the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had warned that the Strait of Hormuz had been closed and that any ship attempting to pass through would be attacked.

“The strait is closed. If anyone tries to pass through, the leaders of the Revolutionary Guard and the general navy will burn those ships,” Ibrahim Jabari, a senior adviser to the commander-in-chief of the IRGC, said on Monday.

Tehran has targeted critical infrastructure for the world’s energy production as part of retaliation for an Israeli and US bombing campaign that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior officials.

“We will attack the oil pipelines and not allow a single drop of oil to leave the region. The price of oil will reach $200 in the coming days,” Jabbari said in a post on the IRGC’s Telegram channel.

“The Americans, who have thousands of billions of dollars in debt, are dependent on the region’s oil, but they should know that not a single drop of oil will reach them,” he was quoted as saying by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

Rising fuel prices

The Strait of Hormuz, located between Iran and Oman, is one of the world’s most critical oil transit routes, with approximately 20 percent of global oil supplies passing through it.

Any disruptions there would push up crude prices further and raise fears of a regional escalation.

Fuel prices had already risen sharply on Monday as disruptions to tanker traffic through the strait and damage to production facilities raised uncertainty about how the US-Israeli attacks on Iran would affect supplies to the world economy.

The biggest shock was to natural gas prices, which rose nearly 50 percent in Europe and nearly 40 percent in Asia after major supplier QatarEnergy halted production of liquefied natural gas after attacks on its LNG facilities.

Earlier, Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura oil refinery came under attack by drones and its defenses shot down an incoming plane, a military spokesman told the state-run Saudi Press Agency. The refinery has a capacity of more than half a million barrels of crude oil per day.

In response, according to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the US said it would take action to reduce rising energy prices due to the war with Iran.

“Starting tomorrow, you’ll see us roll out those steps to try to mitigate against that… we expected it to be a problem,” Rubio said.