By Alexander Cornwell, Parisa Hafezi, Bo Erickson and Yomna Ehab
TEL AVIV/DUBAI/NEW BRUNSWICK, New Jersey, June 8 (Reuters) – Israel said on Monday it hit a petrochemical plant in Iran’s southwest, along with strikes elsewhere on military targets, after U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from further attacks.
In the first hit on an energy site inside Iran since the April 8 ceasefire, Israel said it struck targets at the Mahshahr petrochemical complex, while a provincial official told Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency parts of the plant were damaged.
Hours earlier, Trump said new strikes by Israel and Iran would not affect his administration’s peace talks with Tehran, adding that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “doesn’t call the shots.”
Trump has leaned on Israel to stop its attacks in Lebanon to allow room for a deal to end the wider war with Iran, including rebuking Netanyahu with obscenities in a phone call last week.
However, earlier on Sunday Israel launched strikes in the Beirut area for the first time since the U.S. announced a truce plan for Lebanon last week.
Iran fired salvos of missiles at Israeli targets in retaliation, putting U.S.-Iran peace talks at risk. But Trump insisted that an agreement to end the wider war remained well within reach.
“It’s not going to have any impact on the deal,” Trump told the Financial Times. “I call the shots. I call all the shots. He (Netanyahu) doesn’t call the shots.”
A few hours later, Israel’s defence forces said they had struck Iranian military targets. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Israel used air-launched ballistic missiles in its attacks.
Iran had fired 11 ballistic missiles at Israel, its ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, said on X, adding, “Everyone has had enough of this maniacal Iranian regime.”
Israel was targeting Iran’s surface-to-surface missile launch sites and infrastructure facilities, he said, adding, “No self-respecting country in the world would tolerate such an attack, and neither will Israel.”
The latest hostilities drove oil prices up more than 3% on Monday, with benchmark Brent futures back above $96 a barrel.
In a brief statement, Israel’s defence forces said, “The Israeli Air Force struck several targets at the petrochemical complex in Mahshahr.”
No further details of Monday’s damage were immediately available. Iran’s state media have said enemy projectiles have hit five production lines at the plant since the Iran war began on February 28.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had targeted Ramat David air base, near Nazareth. The Israeli military said it identified missiles launched from Iran and its defence systems had intercepted them.
“The missile alerts sounded at 6 a.m. in Jerusalem,” U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee said on X, adding, “The mothership of Satan is in Tehran.”
The Israeli military said it had activated aerial defence systems to intercept a missile it identified as having been launched from Yemen, in an attack that would be Yemen’s first on Israel since the ceasefire.
TRUMP URGED NETANYAHU TO HOLD OFF FURTHER STRIKES
Trump spoke with Netanyahu by telephone from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, for a little less than half an hour on Sunday, an Israeli official said, without giving details.
The White House and the Israeli prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump told Netanyahu during the call to refrain from further strikes because “we are close to doing something good in terms of a deal,” according to a U.S. official quoted by Axios.
Since the start of the talks, Israel has kept up attacks in Lebanon in a conflict with Hezbollah that Israeli officials insist should be treated separately from any Iran ceasefire.
Tehran has long said any peace deal with the U.S. would depend on a ceasefire also holding in Lebanon, which Israel invaded in March in pursuit of Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters who fired rockets and drones across the border in solidarity with Tehran.
Iran’s chief peace negotiator, Parliamentary Speaker Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf, said U.S. bases and Israeli assets were legitimate targets because of hostile acts, including the “violation of agreements over Lebanon.”
Before Sunday, Iran had not attacked Israel since a ceasefire in the wider war started in April, although Hezbollah had done so.
Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington and Tehran were close to an agreement on ending the war.
“We’re very close to a deal, or I’m going to blow the hell out of them,” Trump told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” in a recorded interview that aired on Sunday to mark 100 days of the conflict.
TRUMP WANTS NO ATTACKS IN LEBANON
Israel has never halted its Lebanon campaign, which has killed thousands of people and driven hundreds of thousands more from their homes.
Hezbollah, which kept out of truce talks, has also continued its attacks and says it will not give up its weapons unless Israel halts its attacks and withdraws from Lebanon.
Netanyahu said Israel’s Sunday strikes on Beirut’s southern outskirts, a district known as Dahiyeh and a longtime Hezbollah stronghold, were ordered in response to Hezbollah firing toward Israel.
The wider war has been stalled since the U.S. and Israel paused attacks on Iran in early April, with Tehran blocking most shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the main transit route for a fifth of the world’s crude oil and liquefied natural gas.
Washington has imposed its own blockade of Iranian ports.
Though Washington and Tehran have said they are close to a preliminary deal to reopen the strait, they have repeatedly traded strikes, with escalations in recent days that included attacks on nearby Arab states hosting U.S. bases.
Trump has said any agreement to end the war must prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, and he is under pressure to deliver terms tougher than those agreed in 2015 under then-President Barack Obama in a deal Trump later repudiated.
Tehran’s demands include the lifting of U.S. and international sanctions, the release of billions of dollars in frozen assets and recognition of its sway over the strait.
“Of course, this strait will be open, but with new conditions to be determined by the Iranian and Omani authorities,” Iranian Ambassador Kazem Jalali told the Russian newspaper Izvestia in an interview published on Monday.
“We understand that Iran and Oman provide certain services related to this strait. And fees will be charged for those services,” he said, without elaborating.
A source familiar with U.S. plans told Reuters on Saturday that Washington could make Iranian assets available to Gulf neighbours to repair damage inflicted by Iran.
However, any such diversion of Iran’s assets would be illegal, and Tehran would take measures in response, Kazem Gharibabadi, its deputy foreign minister, said on Sunday.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Peter Graff, Kristina Cooke and Clarence Fernandez; Editing by Sergio Non, Sonali Paul and Kate Mayberry)
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