By Enas Alashray, Idrees Ali and Jana Choukeir
CAIRO/WASHINGTON/DUBAI, Sept 10 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said he expected the war with Iran to end after the November U.S. midterm elections and threatened again to attack a site associated with the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme after the two sides launched their biggest wave of attacks on shipping since the start of the six-month-old war.
Tensions in the region were high, with Saudi civil defence authorities on Thursday issuing emergency alerts in the southwestern city of Khamis Mushait for the fourth time in 24 hours, as clashes flared with Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis.
The Houthis were edging closer on Thursday to gaining more leverage over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the southern outlet of the Red Sea and one of the world’s most important routes for shipping, four Yemeni government military sources said.
Brent crude prices hovered above $100 a barrel as supply routes through both the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea remained heavily disrupted.
Iran said it had attacked 10 ships near the waterway on Wednesday after the U.S. sank five Iranian oil tankers, the latest in a series of tit-for-tat strikes that have signalled scant chance of an imminent end to hostilities.
DEADLINES TO END WAR
The war and subsequent increase in fuel prices have helped drive Trump’s popularity to record lows. The president said Tehran was trying to influence the November U.S. midterm elections, which will determine whether his Republican Party retains control of Congress.
“I think war is going to end immediately after the election because they can’t hold out any longer. They’re desperate to try and affect the election,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday.
Trump has previously set deadlines for the war to end.
The Wall Street Journal reported later that top White House advisers, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have privately warned Trump that the conflict could extend through the remainder of his presidency, which ends in January 2029. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
Trump also said the U.S. may hit Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, a heavily fortified site that hosts two deeply buried tunnel complexes near Iran’s damaged Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
“We notice there’s a little activity at Pickaxe. I would advise Iran not to get cute because we will have to hit them very hard,” Trump said in a speech at the midterm Republican convention. Trump has been threatening strikes on Pickaxe Mountain since at least mid-July.
The U.S. and Israel launched military strikes on Iran in February partly due to concerns over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Iran says its nuclear activities are for peaceful purposes.
In recent weeks Washington had cited increasing success guiding tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, which carried about a fifth of global oil supplies before the war. But a resumption of fighting this month appears to have set back any such gradual reopening. Just seven vessels transited the strait on Wednesday, half the 10-day average, preliminary ship-tracking data showed on Thursday.
RED SEA CLASHES
Fighting between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in Yemen has also escalated in the past few days, a second theatre of war that threatens global energy supplies from the Middle East.
Houthi militants have taken control of the Yemeni Red Sea city of Mocha and are launching attacks on the strategic Red Sea islands of Hanish, the Yemeni sources told Reuters on Thursday.
Government forces and their allies are relocating south to Dhubab, which sits directly on the strait, across from the island of Perim. Control of Dhubab and the island is key to gaining hold of the strait, they said.
Bab el-Mandeb, or the Gate of Tears, named for its perilous navigation conditions, lies between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula and Djibouti and Eritrea on the African coast, making it a major prize for the Houthis, who control Yemen’s most populous areas and much of the north.
It is one of the world’s most important routes for crude oil and fuel from the Gulf bound for the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal or the SUMED pipeline on Egypt’s Red Sea coast, as well as commodities bound for Asia, including Russian oil.
Blocking the narrow passage would isolate Gulf oil-producing countries such as energy superpower Saudi Arabia from their main shipping routes after Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz — the primary maritime energy artery between Asia and Europe.
Earlier this week, at least 73 people were wounded in four southern Saudi cities, including Khamis Mushait, in recent Houthi strikes on the world’s largest oil exporter.
The militant group said it attacked an air base in the southwestern city of Khamis Mushait and oil infrastructure in nearby cities in one of the biggest attacks on Saudi Arabia since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in February.
Saudi civil defence authorities issued an all-clear on Thursday following another emergency alert declared in Khamis Mushait.
(Reporting by Elwely Elwelly, Jana Choukeir and Nayera Abdallah in Dubai and Enas Alashray in Cairo, and Idrees Ali, Simon Lewis and Steve Holland in Washington; Writing by Lincoln Feast and Alexandra Hudson; Editing by Michael Perry and Sharon Singleton)
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