Democracy Dies with Dictatorship
NY Times
Apr 2, 2026
Iran War Live Updates: Oil Prices Surge After Trump Threatens to Escalate Attacks
In his address, President Trump also insisted that the military campaign was an overwhelming success but failed to offer a clear exit strategy.
Zolan Kanno-YoungsYan Zhuang and Jason Karaian
Here’s the latest
Oil prices surged and stock markets sank on Thursday, hours after President Trump declared in a national television address that the U.S. military campaign against Iran would escalate and failed to offer a clear exit strategy, though he insisted the war was an overwhelming success.
On Wednesday night, in his first prime-time address from the White House since the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, Mr. Trump vowed to hit Iran “extremely hard” and threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages.” He repeated his threats to hit Iranian infrastructure, including electrical plants, unless a deal was struck.
Investors hoping for clearer signals of a de-escalation appeared disappointed. The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, jumped more than 7 percent in early trading on Thursday, the steepest daily rise in three weeks. Stock markets around the world fell, with indexes in Asia, where countries import vast quantities of oil and gas from the Middle East, hit particularly hard.
Mr. Trump said in his speech that Iran’s “ability to launch missiles and drones is dramatically curtailed.” On Thursday morning, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps said that American and Israeli strikes had not decimated the country’s missile production centers, long-range drones, air defenses or electronic warfare systems. The United States and Israel “know nothing about our vast and strategic capabilities,” the Guards said in a statement on Thursday.
The U.S. and Israeli militaries have destroyed many of Iran’s ballistic missiles and launchers in airstrikes. But a large number are undamaged, and Iran continues to launch missiles and drones.
Early Thursday, Israel’s military said its forces had intercepted missiles launched from Iran. The authorities in the United Arab Emirates said their forces had responded to drone and missile strikes from Iran, while Saudi Arabia reported intercepting a missile and drones without saying where they came from.
Mr. Trump also appeared to plead with Americans uneasy about the war’s economic costs to “keep this conflict in perspective.” He framed the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, a major global conduit for oil, as an issue for other nations, even though he had said hours earlier that he would not agree to any cease-fire deal unless the waterway was opened. Iran has choked off traffic through the strait, causing oil and natural gas prices to surge.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
Strait of Hormuz: Britain’s foreign secretary was expected to host a virtual meeting with dozens of nations — but not the United States — about Iran’s de facto blockade. The Philippines, which declared a national energy emergency last month, said that Iran had granted safe passage through the strait for ships under the Philippines’ flag.
Energy: Iraq has begun exporting oil by land through Syria following disruptions to shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, Iraq’s Oil Ministry said on Thursday. The pathway is the second Iraq has set up after halting most oil tanker shipments through its Basra port. Two tankers were attacked last month in Iraqi territorial waters near the Basra oil terminal.
Nuclear capabilities: Mr. Trump argued in his Wednesday night address that Iran was on the cusp of building a nuclear weapon. That is disputed. Iran could have produced bomb-grade nuclear fuel within days or weeks. But it would take months or more than a year to fashion that fuel into a weapon, American intelligence agencies concluded. Read more ›
Death tolls: The Human Rights Activists News Agency said at least 1,606 civilians had been killed, including 244 children, in Iran since the war began. Lebanon’s health ministry said that more than 1,318 Lebanese had been killed as of Wednesday since the latest fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began. In attacks blamed on Iran, at least 50 people have been killed in Gulf nations. In Israel, at least 17 had been killed as of Friday. The American death toll stands at 13 service members, with hundreds of others wounded.
April 2, 2026, 9:07 a.m. ET7 minutes ago
Erika Solomon and Leily Nikounazar
Iranian officials come out defiant after Trump’s war speech
Iran’s commanders and political officials issued defiant statements on Thursday, with some appearing to respond directly to a speech by President Trump overnight, in which he vowed to take Iran “back to the Stone Ages.”
Mr. Trump said in his speech that the American and Israeli assault on Iran had destroyed much of the country’s military production capacity, as well as its existing ballistic missiles and launchers. Yet Tehran has continued to keep up a daily barrage of drones and rocket aimed at Israel and Washington’s allies in the region.
“Your information about our military power and equipment is incomplete,” a spokesman for the leadership of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a video statement on Thursday.
If the United States and Israel believe they have destroyed Iran’s capacity to produce and deploy drones, electronic warfare and other special equipment, the Guards’ statement continued, “you will deepen the swamp in which you have found yourself.”
In Mr. Trump’s speech, made in prime time on American television on Wednesday night, he described the air war on Iran as a major success, while downplaying the costs to Americans, even as it has unleashed global economic turmoil.
Mr. Trump said the U.S. military was “on track” to complete all of its objectives “very shortly.” He then threatened to deepen attacks on the country, while also saying negotiations were being conducted to end the war.
“We are going to hit them extremely hard,” he said. “Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing.”
Esmail Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, said in a statement on Iran’s state news broadcaster on Thursday that negotiations with Washington were impossible under such conditions.
“We will not tolerate this vicious cycle of war, negotiations, cease-fire and then repeating the same pattern,” Mr. Baghaei said. “This is disastrous not only for Iran, but for the entire region and beyond.”
He and other Iranian leaders have repeatedly argued they have little reason to trust Mr. Trump’s mediators when Israel and the United States have twice begun wars on Iran in the midst of negotiations.
“It is you who are taking your soldiers to their graves, not Iran, whom you seek to drag back to the Stone Age,” said Sayed Majid Moosavi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ air force, on social media. He was responding to a post by the U.S. defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, that echoed Mr. Trump’s threat from his speech.
“Hollywood delusions have so poisoned your minds that, with your paltry 250-year history, you threaten a civilization over 6,000 years old,” Mr. Moosavi added.
April 2, 2026, 8:54 a.m. ET21 minutes ago
Reporting from Washington
Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, said that she and Wang Yi, her Chinese counterpart, had spoken by phone on Thursday about the war. She said they talked about the need to diplomatically resolve Iran’s blocking of the Strait of Hormuz. “Restoring safe, toll-free freedom of navigation in the Strait, consistent with the Law of the Sea, is an urgent priority,” Kallas said. She also called for an end to attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure.
April 2, 2026, 8:50 a.m. ET24 minutes ago
Reporting from London
Britain will convene a meeting of military planners next week to discuss “viable options to make the Strait of Hormuz accessible and safe” for international shipping, the country’s defense ministry said in a statement. President Trump has called on countries other than the United States to “build up some delayed courage” and reopen the route.
April 2, 2026, 8:48 a.m. ET26 minutes ago
Reporting from London
Britain’s foreign minister, Yvette Cooper, has begun a virtual meeting of around 40 nations to discuss reopening the Strait of Hormuz by accusing Iran of hijacking “an international shipping route to hold the global economy hostage.”
She said that in the past 24 hours, 25 vessels had navigated the strait, which would normally be used by 150 ships a day. There had, she added, been more than 25 attacks on vessels leaving around 20,000 seafearers stranded on around 2,000 ships unable to sail. She said that was affecting borrowing costs, gas prices and the cost of living, as well as hitting “our global economic security.”
April 2, 2026, 7:05 a.m. ET2 hours ago
President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Thursday that re-opening the Strait of Hormuz by force was “unrealistic” because it would expose navies to Iranian attacks for long stretches of time. “We don’t believe we can free it or open it by force,” Macron told reporters during a visit to South Korea. He said that reopening the strait could only be done “in coordination with Iran” after establishing a cease-fire and resuming negotiations. He noted that France and other countries have offered to help secure the waters off Iran’s coast once the war ends. “But what we’ve proposed is by no means a forceful operation,” Macron added.
April 2, 2026, 6:43 a.m. ET3 hours ago
President Trump’s televised address did little to soothe investors’ concerns about the supply of oil, whose price jumped more than 7 percent on Thursday, to $108 a barrel in early trading. Oxford Economics forecast that oil prices would average $113 a barrel in the second quarter, assuming the Strait of Hormuz, the vital passageway through which as much as one-fifth of the world’s oil supply normally flows, remains effectively closed through April.
“Trump generally reinforced prior public comments that the war will end in a few weeks, but the military timeline differs from the economic one,” Ryan Sweet, the chief global economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a report. The firm expects tanker traffic through the strait to increase to about 50 percent of normal levels in May and June, which would help ease but not alleviate a global oil shortfall.
April 2, 2026, 6:42 a.m. ET3 hours ago
Reporting from Tyre, Lebanon
Iraq has begun exporting fuel by land through Syria following disruptions to oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, Iraq’s Oil Ministry said on Thursday. The pathway is the second Iraq has set up after halting most oil tanker shipments through its Basra port. Two oil tankers were attacked in Iraqi territorial waters near the Basra oil terminal in early March.
April 2, 2026, 6:26 a.m. ET3 hours ago
The Philippines said Thursday that Iran had granted safe passage to ships under the Philippines’ flag through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, assured the Philippines’ foreign secretary, Theresa P. Lazaro, that “Philippine-flagged vessels, energy sources, and all Filipino seafarers” would be allowed through the strait, according to the Philippines’ foreign ministry.
The Philippines’ president declared a national energy emergency last month, and hundreds of transport workers went on strike to protest the surge in fuel prices.
April 2, 2026, 4:33 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Leily Nikounazar
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps said on Thursday that American and Israeli strikes had not decimated the country’s missile production centers, long-range drones, air defenses or electronic warfare systems. The United States and Israel “know nothing about our vast and strategic capabilities,” the Guards said in a statement. Hours before their statement, President Trump said in a national address that Iran’s missile and drone systems, and production capabilities had been severely curtailed.
April 2, 2026, 3:47 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Reporting from Haifa, Israel
Hezbollah fired several rockets toward northern Israel on Thursday. Israel’s emergency medical service said two men were lightly wounded and evacuated to Ziv Medical Center, a regional trauma hospital in Safed that serves communities in the Upper Galilee near the Lebanese border. Medics said they sustained mild shrapnel injuries.
April 2, 2026, 3:47 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Investors in Asia recoiled from Trump’s White House remarks. The global oil price surged 7 percent to $108 a barrel. Stocks fell hard. South Korea tumbled 4.5 percent and the Nikkei 225 in Japan shed 2.4 percent. S&P 500 futures pointed to a 1.4 percent decline when trading resumes in the United States.
April 2, 2026, 3:47 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Breaking news reporter
The Israeli military said early Thursday that it had intercepted missiles launched from Iran. It instructed residents to take shelter.
April 2, 2026, 3:46 a.m. ET5 hours ago
Breaking news reporter
Gulf countries reported more missile and drone attacks early Thursday. The United Arab Emirates’ defence ministry said its forces responded to drones and missiles from Iran, while Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry said its forces intercepted a missile. The Saudi ministry did not say where the missile came from. The authorities in Bahrain said they had activated warning sirens but did not say what triggered the alarm.