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Topic:Unrest, Conflict and War
Two tankers caught fire in Iraqi waters on Thursday, marking a possible intensification of Iranian attacks. (Reuters: Mohammed)
Hi, I'm ABC global affairs editor Laura Tingle, and I'm in Dubai.
This is the last of my daily updates. From Monday, ABC News Middle East correspondent Matt Doran will be taking over from Jerusalem.
Iran war live updates: For the latest news on the Middle East conflict, read our blog.
Iran has increasingly been turning the war with the United States and Israel into an economic war based on oil. You will have seen the pictures on the news of burning oil refineries and oil tankers across the Gulf. Countries from Kuwait to Iraq have had to wind back production because they are running out of storage space for their oil.
Scores of tankers are sitting on either side of the Strait of Hormuz, unable to move, and vulnerable to Iranian attack. Unable to move, that is, unless they are carrying Iranian oil.
Iran's supreme leader said on Thursday the strait would remain closed, and a defence spokesman said no oil would pass through that could assist the United States or Israel.
Having provoked this situation, the United States has so far declined to help, with the US military reported to have turned down numerous requests from around the region to escort oil tankers or other civilian ships through the strait. Donald Trump has suggested that the US and its allies could provide military escorts to ships crossing the waterway "when the time comes".
Is there any other way of getting the 20 million barrels of oil a day that usually flows out of the Gulf to global customers? Well, yes, there is one way to get at least some oil out.
In the 1980s, Saudi Arabia built a 1,200km-long pipeline — the East West Pipeline — across the width of the Arabian Peninsula to carry oil that would normally be exported via the Gulf to the Red Sea.
The Financial Times reports that a "flotilla of supertankers is steaming towards Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast as the kingdom rushes to reroute oil exports trapped in the Gulf by the Iran war".
"About 30 so-called very large crude carriers, each capable of carrying more than 2 million barrels of oil, are heading to the kingdom's western port of Yanbu over the coming days, according to ship brokers, compared with a long-term average of about two a month,' the FT says.
But the new route carries its own dangers, the FT notes.
"To enter the Red Sea from the south the tankers will need to brave the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, where ships have been struck in recent years by Yemen's Houthi militants — and which is also within range of some Iranian missiles."
You can keep track of the latest updates from Iran and around the world throughout the day via our live blog.
Thanks for joining me. Matt will be with you at the same time on Monday.
Analysis by Laura Tingle
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