First responders inspect the site of an Iranian missile strike in Arad early on March 22, 2026 (local time). Photo / Ilia Yefimovich, AFP
The Middle East war has entered a new phase with regular attacks on globally important energy infrastructure, but there is still no obvious way out, with Washington’s objectives and Tehran’s ability to maintain long-term pressure both unclear.
The conflict sparked on February 28 by the US-Israeli bombardment of Iran is grinding into its fourth week, with Iranian attacks on energy infrastructure in the Gulf and Israeli strikes reaching the Caspian Sea.
Tehran has vowed to retaliate after an Israeli strike on Wednesday (local time) damaged Iran’s South Pars gas field, which draws on the world’s biggest known gas reserve and is vital for domestic supplies.
On Friday (local time), drone attacks hit Kuwait’s giant Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery, a day after a direct hit on Qatar’s vital Ras Laffan natural gas facility.
Geographically, too, the conflict has spread.
Iran on Friday (local time) tried and failed to hit a joint UK-US military base in the Indian Ocean, a UK official said, after the Wall Street Journal reported Tehran fired two ballistic missiles at it.
On Thursday and Friday (local time), Israel said its jets hit several Iranian naval vessels in the Caspian Sea and Iran’s Noor region on its shores.
Iran’s de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil and gas normally flows, and the attacks on energy infrastructure have sent crude oil prices soaring.
A barrel of North Sea Brent crude was up more than 50% over the past month and now comfortably costing more than US$105.
A diplomatic solution to the conflict seems unlikely.
The United States and Israel are pursuing their campaign to take out members of the Iranian leadership, after killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the first hour of the war.
On Wednesday (local time), they killed national security chief Ali Larijani, in what was likely the biggest loss to the Islamic Republic since then.
Israel seems to be aiming for regime change in Tehran, while US Donald Trump has given shifting goals for the war, including ousting Iran’s clerical leaders.
But on Friday (local time), Trump said he was considering “winding down” military operations, listing the objectives as ensuring Iran could never get a nuclear weapon, protecting Gulf allies and destroying Tehran’s missile arsenal, navy, air force and industrial base.
The White House press secretary said the Pentagon was looking at four to six weeks to complete its mission.
Trump earlier rejected the idea of a ceasefire, claiming the United States and Israel were “literally obliterating” Iran.
As for Iran, by extending the conflict to the whole region, it may have alienated Gulf countries who could have acted as mediators to bring about a truce.
Day after day, US and Israeli air power pound Iranian military sites to destroy its missile launchers, stockpiles and production capabilities.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday (local time) claimed that Iran no longer had the capacity to manufacture ballistic missiles.
The spokesman for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Ali Mohammad Naini, refuted those claims, saying that “even under wartime conditions”, Iran was continuing missile production.
A US-Israel strike killed him at dawn on Friday (local time).
The number of Iranian strikes on Gulf countries has dropped since the start of the war.
On Friday (local time), the United Arab Emirates said its air defences detected 26 drones and four ballistic missiles, far fewer than the 117 drones and 17 missiles more than 10 days earlier on March 8.
But analyst Kelly Grieco, of the Stimson Centre, warned against jumping to hasty conclusions.
“Tehran may have simply concluded that a lower, sustained launch rate is sufficient to maintain coercive pressure on Gulf states, while conserving inventory for a conflict that could last months,” she wrote on War on the Rocks.
Reopening the Hormuz Strait to tankers would be risky for the United States.
It “will require the United States to concentrate its forces in a relatively small area”, IISS–Middle East executive director Martin Sampson said.
“For Iran, this will be a target-rich environment,” he said.
Beyond unblocking the actual chokepoint, any power wishing to secure maritime traffic would have to control four islands at the entrance of the Gulf, analyst Pierre Razoux said.
But Iran had turned Siri, Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Moussa into “mini-fortresses, with anti-ship missiles”, he added.
US media last week reported that the Pentagon has dispatched the amphibious assault ship the USS Tripoli and around 2500 Marines to the region.
They “can clearly be used to land on these islands” in order to “secure the shipping lane”, Razoux said.
Daniel Schneiderman, of Penn Washington, said he thought scenarios likely being studied included using the marines “to land on and hold Kharg Island, the site through which 90% of Iran’s oil exports pass” further north inside the Gulf.
Another would be establishing “a beachhead on the Iranian coast to restore freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz”, he added.
The Wall Street Journal said on Friday (local time) that Washington was deploying between 2200 and 2500 US Marines from the California-based USS Boxer Amphibious Ready Group and 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit.
Any of these missions “will almost certainly come at significant costs in terms of troops killed and equipment lost”, Schneiderman added.
Trump on Friday (local time) demanded allies help to secure the strait, saying the United States did not use it.
The conflict could widen still if the Iran-backed Houthi rebels controlling the Yemen capital joined in.
“The Houthis have yet to enter the expanding regional war,” Betul Dogan Akkas of Ankara University said.
“But their ability to disrupt shipping, strike Gulf energy infrastructure and pressure regional rivals makes them the conflict’s most unpredictable actor.”
– Agence France-Presse