The China Mail - Trump pressures NATO, China over Iran's closure of key waterway

Global oil prices have surged by 40 to 50 percent as Iran has choked off the waterway and attacked energy and shipping industry targets in its Gulf neighbours. Crude prices kept rising as markets opened late Sunday.

The US president had called on countries including China, France, Japan, South Korea and Britain Saturday to send ships to escort tankers through the strait, but various countries he listed have given only guarded responses.

"It's only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there," Trump told the Financial Times on Sunday. Unlike the United States, Europe and China are heavily dependent on the Gulf for oil imports.

He warned that no response or a negative reply to his request would be "very bad for the future of NATO." Trump also threatened to delay a planned summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping later this month if Beijing does not assist on reopening the strait.

- Iran warning -

Trump's comments came after Iran warned other countries against getting involved in the war, which has spread across the Middle East.

In a phone conversation with his French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot, Tehran's top diplomat Abbas Araghchi called on other countries to "refrain from any action that could lead to escalation and expansion of the conflict".

Arguing that the US security umbrella in the region was "inviting rather than deterring trouble", Araghchi on X urged neighbouring countries "to expel foreign aggressors".

Iran has launched waves of attacks on countries in the Middle East that host US forces, and Italy's military said a drone attack at Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait -- which hosts both US and Italian forces -- destroyed an unmanned aircraft belonging to Italy, but caused no casualties

Rome's foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, sought to play down the attack -- the second on an Italian base in the Middle East this week -- insisting: "We are not at war with anyone."

Iraqi authorities meanwhile said rockets wounded five people at Baghdad's airport, which houses a US diplomatic facility, while Iran's Revolutionary Guards said about 700 missiles and 3,600 drones had been fired at US and Israeli targets so far.

And French President Emmanuel Macron told Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian it was "unacceptable" to target French interests, after an Iranian-designed drone killed a French soldier in Iraq's Kurdistan region.

- Energy markets -

The war has also spread to Lebanon, where Israel launched a new strike on Beirut's southern suburbs late on Sunday.

And Israeli military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin said the country still has "thousands of targets in Iran, and we are identifying new targets every day."

The International Energy Agency, whose members recently decided to release 400 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves, said Sunday that "stocks will be made available by IEA Member countries in Asia Oceania immediately". The Americas and Europe would follow suit in the weeks to come.

As global markets reel, Trump has doubled down, telling NBC News in a weekend interview that he thought Tehran was keen to come to the table but that the US would keep fighting to force better terms.

"Iran wants to make a deal, and I don't want to make it because the terms aren't good enough yet," Trump told NBC News.

But Araghchi, in an interview with the US network CBS's "Face the Nation", denied Tehran was asking for an agreement.

"We are stable and strong enough," Araghchi said. "We don't see any reason why we should talk with Americans, because we were talking with them when they decided to attack us."

- Millions displaced -

Despite the sharp rhetoric, the atmosphere in Tehran was the most normal it has been since the start of the war on February 28.

Traffic was busier than last week and some cafes and restaurants had reopened, as had more than a third of stalls in the Tajrish bazaar, a popular shopping hub, with Nowruz, the Persian New Year, just days away.

Some shoppers queued at ATMs to withdraw cash. Online operations at Bank Melli, one of the country's largest, had been paralysed in recent days.

It was a similar story outside the capital. In an interview from Tonekabon, a city in Mazandaran province on the Caspian Sea, 49-year-old Ali told AFP that shops were open and crowded despite steep price rises.

"Only the main square is closed every night, and government demonstrations take place," he said, adding that only Iran's domestic intranet was working, without outside connections.

More than 1,200 people have been killed by US and Israeli strikes, according to Iranian health ministry figures that could not be independently verified.

The UN refugee agency says up to 3.2 million people have been displaced in Iran.

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W.Tam--ThChM