By Menna AlaaElDin, Nayera Abdallah and Humeyra Pamuk
CAIRO/DUBAI, March 28 (Reuters) – The risk of an expanded Iran war grew on Saturday as Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis launched their first attacks on Israel since the start of the conflict, even as additional U.S. forces reached the Middle East.
Speaking before the strike, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States expected to conclude military operations within weeks, although a new deployment of U.S. Marines started arriving in the region. The Houthis said they would continue their operations until the “aggression” on all fronts ended.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke to Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose government hosts a meeting with the Turkish and Saudi foreign ministers on Sunday to seek to ease regional tensions.
But there is no sign of an immediate diplomatic breakthrough and the war, launched with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, has spread across the Middle East, killing thousands and hitting the world economy with the biggest-ever disruption to global energy supplies.
On Saturday, Israel said it had carried out a wave of attacks on Tehran, targeting what the military said were infrastructure sites belonging to Iran’s government.
LEBANESE JOURNALISTS, RESCUE WORKERS HIT
It also hit targets in Lebanon, where it has resumed its war against Iran-backed Hezbollah, killing three Lebanese journalists in a strike on a media vehicle, Lebanon’s Al Manar TV reported, as well as a Lebanese soldier. A follow‑up strike on the rescue workers sent to assist them also caused fatalities.
Israel’s military said it had targeted one of the journalists, whom it called a “terrorist”, accusing him of being part of a Hezbollah intelligence unit, and saying he had reported on locations of Israeli soldiers.
Iran kept up attacks on Israel and several Gulf states after hitting an air base in Saudi Arabia on Friday and wounding 12 U.S. military personnel, two of them seriously, in one of the most serious breaches of U.S. air defences so far.
Washington has dispatched two contingents of thousands of Marines to the Middle East, the first of which arrived on Friday on an amphibious assault ship, the U.S. military said on Saturday.
The U.S. could achieve its aims without ground troops, Rubio said on Friday, but acknowledged it was deploying some to the region so Trump would have “maximum” flexibility to adjust strategy as needed.
The Pentagon is also expected to deploy thousands of soldiers from its 82nd Airborne Division.
HOUTHIS CAN STRIKE TARGETS FAR FROM YEMEN
Israel, which regularly faced missile attacks from the Houthis before the war, confirmed a missile had been fired at it from Yemen. There were no reports of casualties or damage.
The attack pointed to a potential new threat to global shipping, already hit by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies.
Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree later said the group carried out a second attack on Israel in less than 24 hours using missiles and drones, and vowed to continue military operations in the coming days.
The Houthis have shown an ability to strike targets far beyond Yemen and disrupt shipping lanes around the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea, as they did in support of Hamas in the Gaza war.
On Friday, they said they were prepared to act if what they called an escalation against Iran and the “Axis of Resistance” continued in the war.
If the Houthis open a new front in the conflict, one target could be the Bab al-Mandab Strait off the coast of Yemen, a chokepoint for sea traffic towards the Suez Canal.
With midterm elections due in November, the increasingly unpopular war has weighed on President Donald Trump’s Republican Party and he has appeared eager to end it soon, while also threatening escalation.
Demonstrators took to city streets across the U.S. on Saturday in anti-Trump rallies described by organizers as a call to action against the war on Iran.
MORE STRIKES WHILE TRUMP SPEAKS OF NEGOTIATIONS
Financial markets have reacted with alarm to signs the war may drag on. The Brent crude oil benchmark is up more than 50% since the war began.
Trump has threatened to hit Iranian power stations and other energy infrastructure if Iran does not open the Strait of Hormuz. But he has extended a deadline he had imposed for this week, giving Iran another 10 days to respond.
Iranian threats to attack ships in the strait have kept most oil tankers from attempting the waterway. A few vessels have traversed the strait without issue, including ships under the flags of Pakistan and India, after Iranian assurances of safe passage.
Iran has agreed to allow an additional 20 Pakistani-flagged vessels to pass through the strait, with two ships permitted to transit daily, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said.
Israel has targeted Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, and the head of Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom, which has evacuated staff from the Bushehr nuclear power plant on the Gulf coast, said the attacks threatened nuclear safety.
Pezeshkian said Iran would “retaliate strongly if our infrastructure or economic centers are targeted”.
Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey have relayed messages between the warring sides although Tehran has said it has not been negotiating with Washington. Two people familiar with the back-channel efforts expressed doubt that direct talks would happen soon.
Iranian attacks were reported in multiple areas across the Gulf, including Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. An Iranian airstrike hit the Israeli village of Eshtaol, near Jerusalem. Seven people were hospitalized, Israel’s ambulance service said.
In Iran, media said at least five people were killed in a U.S.-Israeli attack on a residential unit in the northwestern city of Zanjan and in Tehran, the Iran University of Science and Technology was struck.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Lincoln Feast and James Mackenzie; Editing by William Mallard, Edwina Gibbs, Keith Weir, Timothy Heritage, Sergio Non, Rod Nickel)
