DUBAI\/WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump encouraged Iranian Kurdish forces in Iraq to launch attacks against Iran as the Middle East conflict widened, with Azerbaijan warning it would retaliate for being targeted by Iranian missiles.<\/p>\n
Israel on Friday said it had \u200bstarted a \u201cbroad-scale\u201d wave of attacks against infrastructure targets in Tehran, as Gulf cities came under renewed bombardment by Iran.<\/p>\n
The seven-day war has now seen Iran target Israel, the Gulf states, Cyprus, Turkiye and Azerbaijan, and spread to the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka where a US submarine sank an Iranian naval ship.<\/p>\n
On the possibility of the Iranian Kurdish forces entering Iran, Trump told Reuters on Thursday: \u201cI think it\u2019s wonderful that they want to do that, I\u2019d be all for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two Iranian drone attacks targeted an Iranian opposition camp in Iraqi Kurdistan on Thursday, security sources said.<\/p>\n
Iranian Kurdish militias have consulted with the United States in recent days about whether, and how, to attack Iran\u2019s security forces in the western part of the country, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.<\/p>\n
The Iranian Kurdish coalition of groups based on the Iran-Iraq border in \u200cthe semi-autonomous region \u200cof Iraqi Kurdistan has been training to mount such an attack in hopes of weakening the country\u2019s \u200bmilitary, \u200cas \u2060the United \u200bStates \u2060and Israel pound Iranian targets with bombs and missiles. Trump, speaking with Reuters in a telephone interview, also said the United States must have a role in deciding who will be the next leader of Iran after airstrikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to choose that person along with Iran. We\u2019re going to have to choose that person,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that the US was not expanding its military objectives in Iran, despite what Trump said about choosing the country\u2019s next leader.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no expansion in our objectives. We know exactly what we\u2019re trying to achieve,\u201d he said. The attack on Iran is a major political gamble for the Republican president, with opinion polls showing little support and \u2060Americans concerned about the rise in gasoline prices caused by disruption to energy supplies. Trump dismissed that \u200cconcern. Shares on Wall Street fell on Thursday, weighed by surging oil prices, as the \u200ceconomic impact of the campaign intensified, with countries around the world cut off from a \u200bfifth of global supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas and \u200cair transport still facing chaos and global logistics increasingly snarled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DUBAI\/WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump encouraged Iranian Kurdish forces in Iraq to launch attacks against Iran as the Middle East conflict widened, with Azerbaijan warning it would retaliate for being targeted by Iranian missiles. Israel on Friday said it had \u200bstarted a \u201cbroad-scale\u201d wave of attacks against infrastructure targets in Tehran, as Gulf cities came …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":94693,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94694,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94680\/revisions\/94694"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}