A building lies in ruins after a strike, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, on March 12, 2026 [Majid Asgaripour\/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhat has the war cost so far?<\/h2>\n Economically, both sides have weaponised energy. Israel first targeted Iran\u2019s oil facilities in Tehran on March 8, prompting an outcry from global health experts over the potential risk of air and water pollution.<\/p>\n
Iran has, meanwhile, tightened its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz shipping route \u2013 the only route to open sea for oil producers in the Gulf \u2013 with its military promising on Wednesday that it has the capabilities to wage a long war that could \u201cdestroy\u201d the world economy.<\/p>\n
Attacks on ships in the strait, through which about 20 percent of global oil and gas traffic normally passes, have effectively closed the route.<\/p>\n
Oil prices rocketed above $100 per barrel late last week, up from around $65 before the war, with ordinary buyers feeling the increases at pumps in the US, Europe and parts of Africa.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Iran upped the ante, saying it would not allow \u201ca litre of oil\u201d to pass through the strait and warned the world to expect a $200-per-barrel price tag.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know how quickly it\u2019ll revert back,\u201d Freya Beamish, chief economist at GlobalData TS Lombard, told Al Jazeera. \u201cWe do think it\u2019ll revert back to $80 in due course, but the ball is to some degree in Iran\u2019s court,\u201d she said, adding that because Iran needs oil revenue, the price hikes are expected to be time-limited.<\/p>\n
The International Energy Agency agreed on Wednesday to release 400 million barrels from the emergency reserves of several member states but it is not yet clear what impact that will have, nor how quickly this quantity of oil can be released.<\/p>\n
Tehran has also been accused of directly attacking oil facilities in neighbouring countries this week. Iraq shut all its oil port operations on Thursday after explosive-laden Iranian \u201cdrone\u201d boats appeared to have attacked two fuel tankers in Iraqi waters, setting them ablaze and killing one crew member.<\/p>\n
A drone was filmed striking Oman\u2019s Salalah oil port on Wednesday, although Tehran has denied involvement.<\/p>\n
What are Iranian officials saying about ending the war?<\/h2>\n There has been conflicting messaging from the Iranian leadership.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s elite army unit and parallel armed force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), continues to show defiance, issuing threats and launching attacks on Israel and US military assets and infrastructure in neighbouring Gulf countries.<\/p>\n
However, the political leadership has appeared more inclined towards diplomacy, analysts say. On Wednesday, President Pezeshkian said that ending the war would take the US and Israel recognising Iran\u2019s rights, paying Iran reparations \u2013 although it\u2019s unclear how much is being asked for \u2013 and providing strong guarantees that a future war will not be waged.<\/p>\n
In a video recording last week, he also apologised to neighbouring countries for the strikes and promised that Iran would stop hitting its neighbours as long as they do not allow the US to launch attacks from their territory.<\/p>\n
\u201cI personally apologise to the neighbouring countries that were affected by Iran\u2019s actions,\u201d the president said, adding that Tehran was not looking for confrontations with its neighbours.<\/p>\n
However, it is not known how much sway the political leadership has over the IRGC. Hours after the president\u2019s apology last week, air defence sirens went off in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Bahrain, as strikes continued on the Gulf.<\/p>\n
So, what is Iran\u2019s actual position?<\/h2>\n \u201cIran wants to go to the end to make sure that the United States and Israel never attack Iran again \u2026 so this has to be the final battle,\u201d Al Jazeera\u2019s Resul Serdar Atas explained.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the IRGC sees this as an existential war, but the timing of Pezeshkian\u2019s statement about ending the conflict also shows Tehran is pressured economically, politically and militarily, Zeidon Alkinani of Qatar\u2019s Georgetown University told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese differences and divisions [between IRGC and political leaders] always existed even prior to this war but we may notice it now more, given the fact that the IRGC believes that it has the right to take the front seat in leading this regional war, which is why a lot of the statements and positions are contradicting with the official ones from Pezeshkian,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The IRGC reports directly to Iran\u2019s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and not to the country\u2019s political leadership. That council is led by Ali Larijani, a top politician and close aide to the late supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who analysts describe as a \u201chardliner\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a post on X on Tuesday, Larijani responded to threats from Trump about attacks on the Strait of Hormuz, saying: \u201cIranian people do not fear your hollow threats; for those greater than you have failed to erase it \u2026 So beware lest you be the ones to vanish.\u201d<\/p>\n
The newly elected supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was once in the IRGC and was put forward by the unit as the next ayatollah after his father was killed on the first day of the war, analysts say. He is thus not expected to follow the reformist, diplomatic ideals of President Pezeshkian and other political leaders which his father managed to marry with the IRGC militarised stance, they say.<\/p>\nMojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran\u2019s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, attends a gathering in Tehran on March 2, 2016. Iran marked the appointment of Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei to replace his father as its supreme leader with a barrage of missiles against Israel and the Gulf states [File: Rouhollah Vahdati\/ISNA via AFP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhat do the US and Israel say about ending the war?<\/h2>\n There have also been conflicting messages from the Trump administration and Israel regarding when the war mission on Iran, codenamed Operation Epic Fury, is likely to end.<\/p>\n
Trump told US publication Axios on Wednesday that the war on Iran would end \u201csoon\u201d because there\u2019s \u201cpractically nothing left to target\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnytime I want it to end, it will end,\u201d he added. He had said earlier on Monday that \u201cwe\u2019re way ahead of our schedule\u201d and that the US had achieved its goals, even as speculation mounts about a possible US ground mission.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Israel\u2019s Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that the war would go on \u201cwithout any time limit, for as long as necessary, until we achieve all the objectives and decisively win the campaign\u201d.<\/p>\n
Analysts say Trump\u2019s stance that the conflict will be quick reflects increasing pressure on his administration ahead of upcoming mid-term elections in November.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s advisers privately told him this week to find a quick end to the war and avoid political backlash, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal. That came as polls from Quinnipiac University and The Washington Post suggested that most Americans are opposed to the war in Iran.<\/p>\n
In his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump promised to lower prices, and inflation had stabilised at 2.4 percent ahead of the war, according to government data released on Wednesday. Analysts speculate the conflict will likely push it back up.<\/p>\n
The US spent more than $11.3bn in the first six days of the war, Pentagon officials told lawmakers in a classified briefing on Tuesday, Reuters reported this week \u2013 nearly $2bn a day.<\/p>\n
The Washington-based think tank, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), estimated that the war cost Washington $3.7bn in its first 100 hours alone, or nearly $900m a day, largely due to its expenditure on costly munitions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s quite ironic that [Trump] chose a war that would make affordability worse, not better,\u201d Rebecca Christie, a senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank, told Al Jazeera\u2019s Counting the Cost.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cEvery time the US loses even one object, air defence or a plane or something like that, that represents an awful lot of money that could have been used on some of these issues that have an impact on people\u2019s day-to-day lives in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has laid out terms for ending the war with the United States and Israel in what analysts say is a possible sign of de-escalation from Tehran as the US-Israel war on Iran entered its 13th day on Thursday. In a post on Wednesday on social site X, Pezeshkian said he had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-explained"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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