Trump orders new strikes on Iran, demands surrender

President Donald Trump ordered a new wave of strikes on Iran on July 31, and the Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed officials in Washington, reported that the bombing could begin over the weekend and run for several days. For Serbia, one detail in that report matters more than the rest: energy infrastructure is on the target list, which means every day of the offensive feeds straight into the world price of crude, and from there, with a lag of a few weeks, into the price at Serbian pumps.

The stated goal is not retaliation for a single attack. The goal is to force Tehran to surrender. That is a shift in the character of a war that began on February 28, when joint US and Israeli air strikes opened the first phase, and which resumed in early July after an April ceasefire collapsed when Iran opened fire on shipping.

What was actually ordered

Trump spoke about the continuation of the strikes to reporters on Friday, at a cabinet meeting at Camp David. The immediate trigger for the escalation was an attack on a US base in Jordan.

We’ll be hitting them very hard. You know, at some point they’re going to say: We just can’t take it anymore.

Asked about talks with Tehran, the American president was blunt: “I’m losing faith in them because they do lie and they do misrepresent things.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Iran would keep paying until it came to the negotiating table in a way Trump considers meaningful. The wording was chosen with care, because it leaves Washington to decide on its own when an Iranian offer counts as serious.

Why are refineries and power plants on the list?

According to CBS, the target list includes energy infrastructure, among it oil refineries and power plants. The logic is crude and simple: oil is the Iranian budget, and electricity is what the population feels on day one. Markets moved the same afternoon, with US WTI crude climbing past 86 dollars a barrel in post-settlement trading on Friday.

Iran has already closed the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage that carries a large share of the world’s seaborne oil. Earlier this week we reported that Kuwait shot down Iranian drones over its vital sites and that Washington was targeting Iranian oil. What was an assessment then is, according to American reporting, now an operational plan with a deadline attached.

Embassies tell Americans to be ready to go

US embassies in Jerusalem and other Middle Eastern capitals issued security alerts on August 1. The wording is short and leaves little room for interpretation:

Consider departure or be prepared to depart because of the possibility of unforeseen escalation.

The alert landed a day after the order for the offensive had, according to American media, already been signed. The diplomatic channel is speaking to two audiences at once, to American citizens and to host governments, because in the region a text like this reads as a countdown.

Is Israel joining the offensive?

The reporting diverges, and that in itself is a data point:

• CNN reported no indication that Israel would take part
• CBS said there was joint American and Israeli planning
• ABC mentioned conversations with Israeli officials, without a clear role

Israeli assessments hold that Iran will fire missiles at Israel even if Israel stays out of the opening phase. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was at the White House on July 28, three days before the order.

The force posture shows how thin the cover is. The head of US European Command, General Alexus Grynkewich, warned that he does not have enough forces to defend both Israel and NATO territory at the same time. European Command has five destroyers based in Rota, Spain, and two of them were in the Mediterranean as of Friday. That number concerns Europe as much as the Gulf, and it explains why European capitals are not treating this offensive as somebody else’s war.

Tehran answers

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned against an adventurous move by the United States in calls with Turkish and Pakistani officials, and said Tehran was ready to answer any aggression with a decisive and proportionate response. The head of the Iranian army’s central command, Ali Abdollahi, was more direct:

Any country that serves as a defensive shield for criminal and aggressor America will be engulfed by the flames of war.

That sentence is not aimed at Washington. It is aimed at the Gulf capitals that host American bases and radar systems on their own soil, and the Kuwaiti drone incident showed what the threat means in practice.

The war has also moved beyond the military domain. Iran is the leading suspect in cyberattacks on water systems in Minnesota and Michigan, so the first effects of this escalation are already being felt in American municipalities thousands of kilometres from the Gulf.

The next two or three days will show whether this is pressure applied ahead of a negotiating table or the start of the widest phase of the war since February. For now the price of a barrel is the only part of that calculation Serbia feels with no intermediary at all.