The benchmark oil price has dipped after US President Donald Trump said the war with Iran will end “very soon.”
Oil surged past $100 a barrel on Monday, before Trump said the war was “very far ahead of schedule” and “very complete, pretty much.”
His comments led to a fall in the oil price, which is now closer to $90 a barrel, but still well above pre-war levels.
But Trump lacked clarity, even when pushed for detail, and the president later threatened to hit Iran “20 times harder” if they blocked the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran has reportedly said it will not allow “one litre of oil” to be exported from the region if US-Israeli attacks continue.
Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has issued a new evacuation order for residents of the coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon in Lebanon ahead of air strikes.
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In a post on X, the IDF’s Arabic spokesman Avichay Adraee says Israeli forces would be targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in specific areas of the cities in the near future.
The alert follows an earlier evacuation order for people in southern Lebanon, urging residents to move north of the Litani River ahead of strikes.
Also, Israel’s ambassador to France, Joshua Zarka, says Israeli forces are “ahead of schedule on the war objectives.”
Speaking to French broadcaster BFMTV, Zarka says their prediction that the war would last “a few weeks…hasn’t changed. How many weeks exactly, I can’t tell you.”
On the selection of Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father as Iran’s new supreme leader, the ambassador says he’s not “who the Iranians wanted to choose.
“They’ve (the Assembly of Experts) chosen someone, but we don’t know what his goals are or what his relationship with the Revolutionary Guards is.”
“If he continues to follow the same path as his father, he will also be added to the list of those who must be eliminated.”
