TEL AVIV/WASHINGTON — Iran attacked and set ablaze a fully loaded crude oil tanker off Dubai on Monday, as President Donald J. Trump warned the US would obliterate Iran’s energy plants and oil wells if it does not open the Strait of Hormuz.

The strike on the Kuwait-flagged Al-Salmi is the latest in a string of assaults on merchant vessels by missiles or explosive air and sea drones in the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz since the US and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28.

The month-long conflict has spread across the Middle East, killing thousands, disrupting energy supplies and threatening to send the global economy into a tailspin.

Crude oil prices briefly spiked anew after the attack on the tanker, which can carry around 2 million barrels of oil worth more than $200 million at current prices.

Kuwait Petroleum Corp., the ship’s owner, said the attack happened early on Tuesday, causing a fire and hull damage, but there were no reported injuries.

Authorities in Dubai later said they had been able to bring the fire under control following a drone attack on the tanker. No injuries have been reported, they said.

The jump in oil and fuel prices has started to weigh on US household finances and become a political headache for Mr. Trump and his Republican Party ahead of the November midterm elections, having vowed to lower energy prices and ramp up US oil and gas production.

The US national average retail price of gasoline crossed $4 a gallon for the first time in more than three years on Monday, data from price-tracking service GasBuddy showed, as tightening global supplies push US crude prices above $101 a barrel.

TROOPS DEPLOY AS TALKS CONTINUE
Attacks by both sides are showing no signs of easing, with fears of a wider conflict growing.

Iran-aligned Houthis entered the war by firing missiles and drones at Israel in recent days and Turkey reported a ballistic missile launched from Iran had entered Turkish airspace before being shot down by North Atlantic Treaty Organization air and missile defenses.

Israel carried out missile strikes on what it called military infrastructure in Tehran and infrastructure used by Iran-backed Hezbollah in Beirut, leaving black smoke hanging over the Lebanese capital.

Sounds of explosions were heard in parts of eastern and western Tehran minutes after Israel issued a warning of imminent strikes in the city, Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported on Tuesday. Residents in the eastern Pirouzi district reported power outages after the blasts, while officials from Iran’s energy ministry began efforts to restore power, Tasnim added.

The Israeli military said early on Tuesday that four soldiers had been killed in southern Lebanon, the same area as three United Nations peacekeepers from Indonesia were killed in two separate incidents in recent days.

Iran’s military spokesman said on state television that targets in the latest wave of Tehran’s missile and drone attacks included “hideouts” of US military personnel in five bases in the region and in Israel.

Thousands of soldiers from the US Army’s elite 82^nd Airborne Division have started arriving in the Middle East, two US officials told Reuters on Monday, part of reinforcements that would expand Mr. Trump’s options to include a ground assault in Iran, even as he pursues talks with Tehran.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Mr. Trump wanted to reach a deal with Iranian leaders before a second deadline, now April 6, for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that normally carries about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies.

Ms. Leavitt said talks with Iran were progressing, adding that what Tehran says publicly differs from what it tells US officials in private.

Iran said earlier on Monday it had received US peace proposals via intermediaries, following weekend talks between the foreign ministers of Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said the proposals were “unrealistic, illogical and excessive.”

“Our position is clear. We are under military aggression. Therefore, all our efforts and strength are focused on defending ourselves,” he told a press conference.

NEW TRUMP THREAT TO OBLITERATE IRAN ENERGY, OIL PLANTS
Soon after Mr. Baghaei’s remarks, Mr. Trump said the US was in talks with a “more reasonable regime” to end the war in Iran but also issued a new warning over the Strait of Hormuz.

“Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post, also threatening to attack Iranian desalination plants.

However, the Wall Street Journal reported Mr. Trump had told aides he is willing to end the military campaign even if the Strait remains largely closed and leave a complex operation to reopen it for a later date. That helped oil prices retreat and lifted stock markets off their lows as investors hoped for some way for hostilities to end swiftly.

Asked about the report, the White House referred to comments made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who told Al Jazeera the strait would be open “one way or another” after the US military operation.

The White House said Mr. Trump was considering asking Arab nations to pay for the cost of the war. “It’s an idea that I know that he has and something that I think you’ll hear more from him on,” Ms. Leavitt said in response to a reporter’s question about the idea.

His administration requested an additional $200 billion in funding for the war. The request faces stiff opposition in the US Congress which must approve new spending. — Reuters

YAOUNDE — World Trade Organization (WTO) countries failed to agree on a reform path or even a routine extension of an e-commerce duty moratorium, prompting a fresh vow from the US to seek alternative deals with like-minded countries and relegate the body to only a limited role in global trade policy.

Four days of talks among trade ministers in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde broke up in the early hours of Monday with Brazil and Turkey blocking a bid to extend the WTO’s e-commerce moratorium, including on digital downloads and streaming.

The moratorium, agreed at the dawn of the Internet, lapsed for the first time in 28 years.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a statement that he has secured agreements from dozens of countries, including nearly all major trading partners, not to impose tariffs on US digital transmissions. He vowed that if the WTO fails to restore the moratorium, “the United States will work outside of the WTO with all interested partners to get it done.”

Mr. Greer, who is the architect of US President Donald J. Trump’s multi-front tariff assault on global trading partners, said he was disappointed that the meeting ended in an impasse. He said some countries demonstrated a “lack of seriousness” in WTO reform by not sending their trade ministers to Cameroon.

“I have always been skeptical of the value of the WTO, and this week’s conference confirmed that this organization will play only a limited role in future global trade policy efforts,” Mr. Greer said.

The WTO has been increasingly sidelined by economic nationalism in the past decade, and its 14^th ministerial conference in Cameroon will further that trend, analysts said.

RISK OF A ‘SPAGHETTI BOWL’ OF DEALS
“It marks another crack in the foundations of the WTO system,” said Andrew Wilson, deputy secretary general of the International Chamber of Commerce.

Meanwhile, Jonathan McHale, vice-president of digital trade at the Computer and Communications Industry Association, said that WTO members have allowed the digital trade issue to become “a negotiating football.”

“WTO members must return to this issue urgently in Geneva, build on the draft texts developed at MC14, and deliver a durable solution that restores certainty and credibility to the system,” he said.

The talks tested the WTO’s relevance after a year of huge trade turmoil and more recent disruptions in the Middle East.

Still, a subset of 66 members did agree to sidestep previous hurdles to ‌usher in the world’s first baseline deal on digital trade rules among participants.

The parties of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership — 12 countries including Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and Mexico but not the US — met with the European Union (EU) on the sidelines of the WTO talks.

As diplomats pursue a mix of agreements between two or larger subsets of countries, they risk creating a complex “spaghetti bowl” of agreements, said Dmitry Grozoubinski, executive director of the Geneva Trade Platform.

E-COMMERCE TEST
Extending the e-commerce moratorium was seen as key to securing WTO support from the US, which under Mr. Trump has retreated from global multilateral bodies.

WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the trade body hoped the moratorium could still be restored, adding that Brazil and the US were trying to reach agreement on it.

She said progress was made on a reform roadmap and talks on issues like making subsidy use more transparent and facilitating decision-making are expected to continue in Geneva.

The US and the EU argue that China in particular has taken advantage of current rules to their detriment. China has long dismissed accusations that it flouts trade rules and said it supports the multilateral system, including the WTO.

Diplomats worked through Sunday to close the gap between Brazil’s initial two-year proposal on the moratorium and the permanent extension sought by the US by drafting a plan for a four-year extension with a one-year sunset buffer.

Brazil then offered a four-year extension with a mid-term review clause, but it lacked sufficient support.

Developing countries opposing a lengthy extension argue the moratorium denies them potential tax revenue.

A US official said Brazil had opposed a “near-consensus document.” A Brazilian diplomat said, “the US wanted the sky,” and that a longer extension was not prudent given rapid developments in digital trade.

Another diplomat said US Trade Representative Mr. Greer made delegates “uncomfortable” by warning of “natural consequences” if a long-term extension was not agreed.

Keith Rockwell, a trade analyst at the Hinrich Foundation and a former WTO director, said Brazil’s efforts to leverage e-commerce for concessions on agriculture failed because the US was no longer so invested in the WTO.

“In the old days, because they felt responsibility for the system, the Americans would have swallowed hard and taken a hit,” he said. “But now they won’t do that anymore.” — Reuters

SYDNEY — Australia threatened on Tuesday to sue social media giants for allegedly flouting a ban on under-16s, as its internet regulator disclosed it is investigating some of the biggest platforms for suspected noncompliance with the world-first measure.

Three months after the ban came into effect, the eSafety Commissioner said it was probing Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, Google’s YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok for possible breaches of the law.

Communications Minister Anika Wells said the government was gathering evidence “so that the eSafety Commissioner can go to the Federal Court and win.”

“We have spent the summer building that evidence base of all the stories that no doubt you have all heard… about how kids are getting around that,” Ms. Wells told reporters in Canberra.

Governments around the world are watching Australia’s moves to rein in the tech giants, with many considering similar regulation to protect children from harms including bullying and body-shaming associated with social media.

The legal threat is a striking change of tone from a government which had hailed tech giants’ shows of cooperation when the ban went live in December.

After an early claim the companies had deactivated 4.7 million suspected underage accounts, the government has faced daily headlines of teenagers evading restrictions or simply keeping their accounts without being asked their age.

Meta and Snap said they were committed to complying with the ban, and a Meta spokesperson added the government’s own trial of age-assurance technology found “natural error margins” around the 16 age cutoff.

TikTok declined to comment while a Google spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

Under the Australian law, platforms must show they are taking reasonable steps to keep out underage users or face fines of up to A$49.5 million ($34 million) per breach, something eSafety would need to pursue in a civil court.

ENFORCEMENT STANCE
The regulator previously said it would only take enforcement action in cases of systemic noncompliance.

But in its first comprehensive compliance report since the ban took effect, eSafety said measures taken by the platforms were substandard and it would make a decision about next steps by mid-year.

“We are now moving into an enforcement stance,” said Commissioner Julie Inman Grant in a statement.

The regulator reported major compliance gaps, including platforms prompting children who had previously declared ages under 16 to do fresh age checks, allowing repeated attempts at age-assurance tests until a child got a result over 16 and poor pathways for people to report underage accounts.

Some platforms did not use age-inference, which estimates age based on someone’s online activity, and some only used age-assurance measures like photo-based checks after a user tried to change their age, rather than sign up.

That made it “likely many Australian children aged under 16 have been able to create accounts on age‑restricted social media platforms by simply declaring they are 16 or older,” the regulator said.

Nearly one-third of parents reported their under-16 child had at least one social media account after the ban took effect, of which two-thirds said the platform had not asked the child’s age, it added. — Reuters