22 Jun 2025

Iran Fires More Missiles into Israel and Moves to Close Strait of Hormuz

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Iran launched more missiles at Israel and its parliament passed a bill to close the Strait of Hormuz.

One of Iran’s missiles demolished most of a north Tel Aviv city block.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said the USA must “receive a response” after its attacks on three sites in his country. Iran already said it would target USA military bases in the region if the USA joined Israel in attacking it. Attacks by Israel over the past 10 days have weakened Iran’s military, but not enough to stop its retaliatory strikes. Some of its missiles penetrate Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome defenses.

Closing the Strait of Hormuz, which is in Iran’s territorial waters, would force other countries to care more about the assault by Israel and now also by the USA against Iran. About 20% of global oil and one third of global liquified natural gas goes through that bottleneck every day. Although the parliamentary vote is not binding, it gives the government permission to take that radical step.

Most exports of oil from Saudi Arabia, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq go through the strait. Those countries are all members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Qatar sends nearly all its liquefied natural gas through the strait. UAE and Saudi Arabia, which have been looking for other export routes, oppose Iran in the region (it ranks as the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world, supporting such groups as Hamas and Hezbollah).

Those exports tend to go to Asia, including China, and to Europe. Throttling the flow of those exports would make prices of oil and gas spike, which could destabilize the global economy.

Net exporters of oil and gas that do not need to use the Strait would not be directly affected by its closure, but could see this as an opportunity to rake in more money because they can deliver and the Strait’s closure would raise the prices they can get. Russia and the USA are prominent among the world’s largest net exporters of oil and gas.

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