Iran War Live Updates: Countries Agree to Tap Oil Reserves as Tanker Attacks Add to Supply Fears

 

Iran War Live Updates: Countries Agree to Tap Oil Reserves as Tanker Attacks Add to Supply Fears

The Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil, is all but closed as war in the Middle East expands. A British agency said three ships were hit by unidentified projectiles in or near the strait.

 

March 11, 2026, 3:26 p.m. ET16 minutes ago

Rebecca ElliottAbdi Latif Dahir and Eric Schmitt

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03/11/world/iran-war-news-trump-oil-israel

 

Here’s the latest.

Oil prices rose on Wednesday despite the vow of a coalition of more than 30 countries to tap their reserves in order to stabilize markets, reflecting global fears of a supply crunch amid Iranian threats to choke off the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which one-fifth of the world’s oil transits.

 

Three cargo ships came under attack in or near the strait early Wednesday, and Iran, which has said that no ships could transit the Persian Gulf without its permission, appeared to claim responsibility for one of those strikes.

 

Hours later, the International Energy Agency, which has operated for decades to monitor global crude oil supplies and help prevent price shocks, said that its 32 member countries had agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves.  The release would be the largest in the agency’s history, and the first such coordinated action since 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The agency’s executive director, Fatih Birol, did not say when countries would start releasing oil.

 

Even so, the price of the world’s benchmark crude, which was about $89 a barrel before the announcement, rose to more than $92 in the afternoon, and gasoline prices in the United States climbed for the 11th straight day. Before the Israeli and U.S. bombing of Iran began on Feb. 28, crude traded below $73 a barrel.

 

President Trump, who has sent contradictory signals about the duration of the war against Iran, told Axios on Wednesday that it would end soon because there was “practically nothing left to target.” But Mr. Trump has also said only Tehran’s “unconditional surrender” would end the war, and Iran has shown no sign of halting its attacks.

 

As of several days ago, the intense U.S. and Israeli bombardment of Iran had killed about 1,300 people, according to officials there, a toll that has undoubtedly climbed. Dozens of people have been killed by Iran’s retaliatory strikes on several neighboring countries.

 

In Lebanon, where Israel has been bombing Iran’s ally, Hezbollah, officials said Wednesday that at least 634 people had been killed and more than 800,000 displaced from their homes.

 

The defense ministry in the United Arab Emirates said that its air defenses were responding to incoming missiles and drones from Iran. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar said their forces had intercepted drones and missiles on Wednesday, without saying where they originated. The Pentagon said on Tuesday that Iranian strikes, which have killed seven U.S. service members, have also wounded 140 U.S. service members, eight severely.

 

Here’s what else we are covering:

 

Israel: Israel said in the early hours of the morning that it had launched a wave of strikes on Tehran, the Iranian capital, targeting what it said was the regime’s infrastructure. The Israeli military also issued alerts after detecting what it said were missiles fired from Iran.

 

Strikes in Lebanon: Dozens of people were killed or wounded early Wednesday in Israeli strikes across Lebanon, the country’s national news agency reported. Israel issued an evacuation warning for the densely populated southern outskirts of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, indicating that more strikes are planned.

 

Banks threatened: Major financial institutions including Citi and HSBC temporarily closed offices in the Persian Gulf, after Iran said it would target U.S. and Israeli banks in the region. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps made the threat after an airstrike hit a building in Tehran linked to Bank Sepah, an institution founded in 1922 as Iran’s first modern domestic bank.

 

Deadly school strike: The United States was responsible for the strike on an Iranian school that killed 175 people, most of them children, based on outdated targeting information, according to the preliminary findings of a Pentagon investigation. Mr. Trump had suggested that Iran could be to blame.

 

New leader: Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, who on Monday succeeded his slain father as Iran’s supreme leader, has not appeared on video or in public nor issued any written statements since his appointment was announced. Three Iranian officials said that one reason was concern that any communication could reveal his location and that a second was that he was injured on the opening day of the U.S.-Israeli strikes, they said.

 

John Yoon and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.