(Bloomberg) — U.S. forces rescued an airman from Iran after his fighter jet was shot down, while continued attacks by the Islamic Republic sparked fires that damaged Kuwait’s oil headquarters and shut down an Emirati petrochemical plant.
The US has deployed dozens of aircraft to rescue an injured crew member from a mountainous area, a day after a second person was rescued from the same F-15E aircraft, President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post on Sunday. Trump had earlier threatened to unleash “hell” on Iran as early as Monday, saying the country’s 10-day deadline for a peace deal with the US was running out.
The downing of the US planes shattered the aura of invincibility that Trump has sought to project as the war with Iran enters its second month. Iran’s attacks have brought the Strait of Hormuz – through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas normally flows – to a near standstill, raising energy prices and roiling global markets.
The conflict has sent oil prices into a tailspin, and soaring costs of products such as jet fuel and diesel threaten a renewed wave of inflation. OPEC members plan to raise their production quotas for May, according to two delegates, in a symbolic move as the war cuts output and supplies from several of the alliance’s biggest members.
The rescue mission lasted two days and involved hundreds of special operations troops, with US planes dropping bombs and firing on Iranian convoys to keep them away from the air force’s hideout, the New York Times reported. The US destroyed two of its own special operations aircraft during the operation after they became stuck, the Wall Street Journal reported, without specifying the cause.
Iran said five people were killed and 170 others wounded in an airstrike on a petrochemical complex in the southwest that the Israel Defense Forces claimed.
Bahrain said the drone strike sparked a fire at storage facilities of state-owned energy company Bapco Energies, although it was later extinguished without causing any casualties.
The headquarters of Kuwait Petroleum Corp., which also houses the country’s oil ministry, was set on fire after a similar attack. A separate strike on power plants and water desalination plants caused significant damage and put two production units out of service.
Borouge PLC has suspended operations at a petrochemical plant in Abu Dhabi after several fires broke out from falling debris after intercepting Iranian strikes, the government’s media office said.
Saudi Arabia also reported missile strikes, saying they were shot down.
Israel said on Sunday it had hit more than 120 air defense and missile systems in central and western Iran in the past 24 hours.
Iran has given no sign of accepting Trump’s demands for peace and has set its own terms – most of which are unacceptable to the US and Israel. The president warned that unless Iran agreed to his terms and opened the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping, the US would bomb the country’s civilian energy infrastructure, which could constitute a war crime under international law.
Iran announced on Saturday that Iraq would be exempted from its shipping restrictions in the strait, which allows up to 3 million barrels per day of Iraqi oil cargo. The Iraqi official cautioned that volumes will depend on whether shipping companies are willing to risk entering the strait.
Attacks aimed at the perimeter of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant left one member of security personnel dead, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported yesterday. The main parts of the facility, where Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom has workers, remained intact, Tasnim said.
According to government organizations and the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, more than 5,000 people have been killed in the conflict, nearly three-quarters of them in Iran. More than 1,300 people have been killed in Lebanon, where Israel is waging a parallel war against the Iran-aligned Hezbollah.
–With the help of Yasufumi Saito.
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