Category World News

French President Emmanuel Macron has said France and its allies are preparing a “purely defensive” mission to escort vessels through the Strait of Hormuz once the “most intense phase” of the US-Israeli war on Iran ends.

Speaking in Cyprus on Monday, Macron said the “purely escort mission” must be prepared by both European and non-European countries.

Its purpose “is to enable, as soon as possible after the most intense phase of the conflict has ended, the escort of container ships and tankers to gradually reopen the Strait of Hormuz”, the French president said, without providing further details.

Macron’s comments come as global oil prices have surged amid continued attacks by the United States and Israel against Iran, as well as retaliatory Iranian missile and drone strikes across the wider region.

The war has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic Gulf waterway through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil supplies pass, while Iranian attacks on energy infrastructure in the Middle East also have raised concerns.

Responding to Macron’s comments, top Iranian security official Ali Larijani said, “It is unlikely that any security will be achieved in the Strait of Hormuz amid the fires of the war ignited by the United States and Israel in the region.”

Larijani added in a social media post that security is also unlikely to be restored as a result of plans designed by “parties that were not far removed from supporting this war and contributing to its fanning”.

While European countries have been largely sidelined as the war escalates, several – including France, the United Kingdom and Greece – have sent military assets to Cyprus following an Iranian-made drone attack on a British base on the island.

Greece has dispatched four F-16 fighter planes to the Paphos airbase and its two state-of-the-art frigates Kimon and Psara are patrolling offshore Cyprus, tasked with intercepting any missiles or drones.

Last week, Macron ordered the French frigate Languedoc to waters off Cyprus to bolster the country’s anti-drone and anti-missile defences.

“When Cyprus is attacked, then Europe is attacked,” Macron said after meeting with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Paphos on Monday.

The French president said he would also deploy a total of eight warships, two helicopter carriers and the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the Eastern Mediterranean and the wider Middle East region, calling the move “unprecedented”.

France’s objective “is to maintain a strictly defensive stance, standing alongside all countries attacked by Iran in its retaliation, to ensure our credibility, and to contribute to regional de-escalation”, Macron said.

“Ultimately, we aim to guarantee freedom of navigation and maritime security.”

With the closure of the Strait of Hormuz sending oil prices soaring, finance ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) countries met in Brussels on Monday to discuss how to respond.

Crude oil prices have increased by about 50 percent since the US and Israel launched the war last month, with international benchmark Brent crude prices surpassing $100 a barrel on Monday.

French Finance Minister Roland Lescure told reporters that the G7 ministers did not make a decision on the potential release of emergency oil stocks amid the war. “What we’ve agreed upon is to use any necessary tools if need be to stabilise the market, including the potential release of necessary stockpiles,” Lescure said.

Paul Hickin, editor-in-chief and chief economist at Petroleum Economist, said getting the Strait of Hormuz reopened is the main priority. “That’s not going to happen in any shape or form until there’s a resolution to the conflict,” Hickin told Al Jazeera.

He explained that several countries in the Middle East, such as Kuwait and Iraq, are dependent on the strait to get their energy supplies to market.

“Kuwait and Iraq and those producers, they are really having a shut-in, and it will take a little bit of time to get back up and running,” said Hickin.

“That is the big risk, the knock-on effect … Getting those ships back, getting that infrastructure back up and running, it’s a slow process. So prices won’t come back down as quickly as many may think.”

Top Democratic senators in the United States have called for an investigation into the strike against a girls’ school in southern Iran, saying that the Pentagon must “provide clear answers” about the incident that killed at least 170 people.

Six lawmakers said in a joint statement late on Sunday that they are “horrified” by the bombing of the elementary school in Minab during the opening US-Israeli strikes against Iran on February 28.

“The killing of school children is appalling and unacceptable under any circumstance,” said the senators who serve as the top Democrats on national security panels.

The push comes as new footage of the attack suggested that the site of the school was likely hit by a Tomahawk missile – a weapon used by the US that Israel and Iran do not possess.

The bombing of the elementary school in Minab has become emblematic of the growing civilian death toll from the conflict.

Iranian officials have said that US and Israeli strikes have damaged other schools as well as dozens of medical centres, residential buildings, street markets, a water desalination plant and other civilian targets.

US and Israeli attacks have killed 1,255 people – mostly civilians – in Iran since the start of the war, according to Deputy Health Minister Ali Jafarian.

“They were living in their homes or [were] at their workplace,” the health minister told Al Jazeera in a TV interview.

Hegseth on rules of engagement

In their statement, the US senators noted that Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has openly boasted about loosening the rules of engagement in the attacks against Iran to allow US forces to bomb the country with little restraint.

“Secretary Hegseth needs to ensure the Department of Defense’s ongoing investigation into this strike is thorough, including whether any policy decisions may have contributed to the catastrophe, and provide clear answers to the American public and Congress about how and why this tragedy unfolded,” they said.

The legislators – who include Brian Schatz, Jeanne Shaheen, Jack Reed and Elizabeth Warren – said the “incident and any like it must be fully and impartially reviewed”.

Last week, Hegseth told reporters that US jets are unleashing the “most lethal” strikes on Iran with “maximum authorities”.

“No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars – we fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives,” he said on March 2.

Days later, Hegseth emphasised that the rules of engagement are meant “to unleash American power, not shackle it”.

Despite mounting evidence and multiple visual investigations by news outlets suggesting that the strike on Minab was carried out with US weapons, US President Donald Trump has accused Iran of bombing the school.

“In my opinion and based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” Trump said last week.

For his part, Hegseth has stopped short of echoing the US president’s claim, stressing on multiple occasions over the past days that the Pentagon is investigating the incident.

‘US needs to stop focusing on denial’

Annie Shiel, US director at Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), said there have been numerous incidents in recent years where the US “reflexively” denies civilian harm “only for investigations by the media, civil society, and the US military itself to prove otherwise”.

In 2021, the Pentagon initially denied killing civilians in a strike during the withdrawal in Afghanistan, calling the attack a “righteous” one that targeted ISIL (ISIS).

But weeks later, it acknowledged that the attack was a “tragic mistake” that killed 10 people, including seven children, after independent investigations confirmed the identities of the victims.

Shiel said the Trump administration is treating the “devastating” strike in Minab like a public relations issue.

“The US needs to stop focusing on denial and get to the truth about what happened and why through a thorough, transparent, independent investigation,” Shiel told Al Jazeera.

On Friday, United Nations experts condemned the Minab attack as a “grave assault on children”.

“An attack on a functioning school during class hours raises the most serious concerns under international law and must be urgently, independently, and effectively investigated, with accountability for any violations,” they said.

The United States military says it has killed six men in a strike on an alleged drug-smuggling vessel in the Eastern Pacific Ocean as part of a campaign against traffickers.

The attack on Sunday brought the death toll to at least 157 people since early September when President Donald Trump’s administration began targeting those it calls “narcoterrorists” in small vessels.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” General Francis Donovan, commander of US Southern Command, posted on X with a video showing a small boat being blown up as it floated on the water.

As with most of the military’s statements on the more than 40 known strikes in the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean Sea, US Southern Command said it targeted alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes. The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs.

Trump has said the US is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the US. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narcoterrorists”.

In a meeting with Latin American leaders on Saturday, Trump encouraged them to join the US in taking military action against drug-trafficking cartels and transnational gangs, which he said pose an “unacceptable threat” to the region’s security.

To that end, Ecuador and the US conducted military operations this past week against organised crime groups in the South American country.

With Saturday’s gathering, Trump aimed to demonstrate that he remains committed to focusing US foreign policy on the Western Hemisphere, even while waging a war on Iran that has had repercussions across the Middle East.

Critics have questioned the overall legality of the boat strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the US over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.

The boat strikes also drew intense criticism after the revelation that the military killed survivors of the very first boat attack with a follow-up strike. The Trump administration and many Republican lawmakers said it was legal and necessary while Democratic lawmakers and legal experts said the killings were murder, if not a war crime.

Palestinian journalist Amal Shamali, who worked as a correspondent for Qatar Radio, has been killed in an Israeli air strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) says.

Shamali, who was killed on Monday, also “worked with several Arab and local media outlets and was among the journalists who continued performing their media mission despite the ongoing assault and war on the Gaza Strip”, the PJS said in a statement.

More than 270 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched a genocidal war against Palestinians in the territory on October 7, 2023, in response to Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel.

“This represents one of the bloodiest periods for journalists in modern history, reflecting the scale of the deliberate targeting of Palestinian journalism in an attempt to silence the voice of truth and prevent the documentation of the crimes and violations committed against the Palestinian people,” the PJS said.

The PJS also said: “Targeting journalists will not succeed in breaking the will of the Palestinian journalistic community or deterring it from fulfilling its professional and humanitarian mission of conveying the truth and documenting the crimes and aggression faced by the Palestinian people.”

Gaza’s Government Media Office released a statement after Shamali’s killing, saying it “strongly condemns the systematic targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation”.

The office also said it “holds the Israeli occupation, the U.S. administration, and the countries participating in the crime of genocide – such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France – fully responsible for committing these heinous and brutal crimes”.

It called on international and regional media associations, the international community and human rights organisations to condemn “the crimes” committed against Palestinian journalists and media professionals working in Gaza and to work towards holding Israel accountable for its “ongoing crimes” against Palestinian journalists.

Israeli attacks have killed about 13 journalists every month over more than two years of war, according to a tally by Shireen.ps, a monitoring website named after Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank in 2022.

Of those journalists, at least 10 of them worked for Al Jazeera, including Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Anas al-Sharif, who had reported extensively from northern Gaza.

Israel’s war on Gaza has been the single deadliest conflict for journalists.

According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, more journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began on October 7, 2023, than in the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan – combined.

As per a report released early this year by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Palestine was the deadliest place to work as a journalist in 2025.

The IFJ said the Middle East was the most dangerous region for media professionals, accounting for 74 deaths last year – more than half of the 128 journalists and media workers killed.

The Middle East was followed by Africa with 18 deaths, the Asia Pacific (15), the Americas (11) and Europe (10), according to the report.