Tehran still building missiles, war will go on: IRGC
The spokesman for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) insisted Friday that Tehran was still building missiles, seeking to counter a claim by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it no longer could. Gen Ali Mohammad Naeini also said the Iran war would go on. A short time later, Iranian state television reported Naeini was killed in an airstrike.
“These people expect the war to continue until the enemy is completely exhausted,” the general said of the Iranian public. “This war must end when the shadow of war is lifted from the country.”
The war persisted on Friday in drawing Arab neighbours directly into the conflict, with heavy explosions shaking Dubai early in the morning as air defences intercepted incoming fire over the city, as people observed Eid al-Fitr, the end of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Bahrain’s Interior Ministry reported that a fire erupted Friday morning after shrapnel fell on a warehouse in the island kingdom, while Kuwait said it worked to intercept incoming Iranian fire. Saudi Arabia reported shooting down multiple Iranian drones targeting its oil-rich Eastern Province. Israel hit the Iranian capital, Tehran, with airstrikes on Friday morning.
Activists reported sounds of the strikes around the city as Iranians marked Nowruz, the Persian New Year.
The morning attacks followed Israel’s pledge the previous day to refrain from more strikes on a key Iranian gas field, while Iran kept up its wave of attacks on oil and gas facilities around the Gulf, which have caused millions of people to move into shelters and sent shock waves through the global economy.
The price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, has spiked since Israel and the US started the war with Iran. The death toll from Israeli strikes in Lebanon topped 1,000 people on Thursday during renewed fighting with the militant group Hezbollah.
The spokesman for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has been killed in an airstrike early Friday, Iranian state television reported. Before his death, Gen Ali Mohammad Naeini issued a statement insisting Tehran was still able to build missiles despite the attacks coming from Israel and the United States. Iranian-linked facilities in Dubai have been closed as the Iran war has seen the United Arab Emirates repeatedly targeted by Iranian fire.
The Iranian Hospital, opened in 1972 under the Shah in Dubai, stood closed on Friday. Its website was down and its phone number was disconnected. The hospital, while providing affordable medical care for decades, also had been linked to Iranian intelligence operations in the past, including an incident in which a Dubai police officer allegedly spied for cheaper health care for his daughter.
The Financial Times, which first reported the closure, quoted an anonymous Emirati Government official saying institutions “directly linked” to Iran would be closed after being “misused to advance agendas that do not serve the Iranian people and in violation of UAE laws”.
Emirati Government officials did not respond to a request for comment Friday, the first day of the Eid al-Fitr holiday. The Iranian Club in Bur Dubai earlier wrote on Instagram it would close “due to the current circumstances”.
