Here’s the latest.

Aaron Boxerman

Updated

March 16, 2026, 4:16 a.m. ET22 minutes ago

Yan Zhuang and Aaron Boxerman

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03/16/world/iran-war-trump-oil-lebanon

 

Here’s the latest.

Dubai International Airport briefly suspended all flights on Monday after a nearby fuel tank caught fire, as fighting raged across the Middle East and President Trump turned up the pressure on other countries to help end the de facto Iranian blockade of the vital Strait of Hormuz.

 

As the war entered its third week, Mr. Trump said that member nations of NATO should help open up the narrow waterway for oil tankers or face a “very bad” future. “If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response, I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO,” he told The Financial Times in a short interview on Sunday.

 

Mr. Trump said China should also help unblock the strait, and threatened to postpone a planned April summit in Beijing with Xi Jinping, China’s leader, if it did not comply. Iran is allowing ships carrying oil to China to cross the strait, but other oil tankers have been attacked by projectiles.

 

Asked on Monday about Mr. Trump’s comments, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said that both sides were still discussing his trip to Beijing. The spokesman, Lin Jian, added that China was committed to de-escalation in the Middle East and was maintaining communication “with all relevant parties regarding the current situation.”

 

Iran’s stranglehold on the strait — through which about a fifth of the world’s oil passes — has fed concerns about the global economic fallout from the war. But foreign governments have responded to the idea of sending warships to the strait with caution, if at all.

 

Australia’s transport minister, Catherine King, said Monday that her country does not intend to send ships.

 

On Sunday evening, Mr. Trump spoke with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain about the importance of reopening the strait, according to a spokeswoman for the prime minister. And the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, met in Paris with Chinese officials for trade talks.

 

The Israeli military said early on Monday in the Middle East that it was targeting government infrastructure in Tehran with a “broad wave of attacks,” after having conducted strikes earlier in Beirut, Lebanon. Airstrikes again targeted Tehran’s domestic airport, Mehrabad, and a black plume of smoke was rising from the airport, according to several residents of Tehran.

 

In Iraq, an Iran-allied militia, Kataib Hezbollah, said it launched two drone strikes at the U.S. diplomatic logistics site at Baghdad International Airport early Monday. An Iraqi official who was not authorized to speak publicly said both strikes were intercepted.

 

In Dubai, flights were briefly suspended at Dubai International after the authorities said they responded to a fire from “a drone-related incident” nearby that had caused damage to a fuel tank. Civil defense teams were bringing the fire under control and no injuries had been reported. The airport is normally among the world’s busiest, but it has contended with multiple drone attacks in recent weeks.

 

And in Abu Dhabi, the local authorities said a missile fell on a civilian vehicle, killing a Palestinian national.

 

Here’s what else we are covering:

 

Iranian response: Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told CBS News on Sunday that the country was “ready to defend ourselves as long as it takes” and denied Mr. Trump’s claim a day earlier that Iran wanted to make a deal. “We never asked for a cease-fire, and we have never asked even for negotiation,” he said.

 

Death toll: At least 1,348 civilians in Iran have been killed since the start of the war, Iran’s U.N. representative told the Security Council on Wednesday, the latest figure the country has provided. In Lebanon, officials said that 850 people had been killed. And in Israel at least 12 people have been killed, according to the authorities. The Pentagon has said that 13 American service members have died since the start of the war.

 

Alexandra Stevenson and Murphy Zhao contributed reporting.