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Iran Says ‘All Options’ on Table if US Hinders Fuel Shipments to Venezuela

The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower conducts a combined air wing operation with a B-52 Bomber from US Air Forces Central Command in the Arabian Sea, March 18, 2020. (Central Command)
The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower conducts a combined air wing operation with a B-52 Bomber from US Air Forces Central Command in the Arabian Sea, March 18, 2020. (Central Command)
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Iran Says ‘All Options’ on Table if US Hinders Fuel Shipments to Venezuela

The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower conducts a combined air wing operation with a B-52 Bomber from US Air Forces Central Command in the Arabian Sea, March 18, 2020. (Central Command)
The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower conducts a combined air wing operation with a B-52 Bomber from US Air Forces Central Command in the Arabian Sea, March 18, 2020. (Central Command)

The Iranian government announced that all options are available in response to any American move against its five oil tankers bound to Venezuela to transport fuel, in defiance of US sanctions.

For the second time in a week, government spokesman Ali Rabiei stated Iran’s desire to continue exporting oil to Venezuela and establishing trade relations with Caracas, which is under US sanctions.

“No country is required to comply with the United States’ unilateral sanctions,” he stressed.

In response to a question on Iran’s possible response to US threats to prevent oil exports from Iran to Venezuela, the official said his country wants to be assured of the absence of US “piracy”.

He expressed hope that the international community would take a step in this regard.

“We hope that America does not make such a mistake … If they take any action, we reserve the right to respond and will respond accordingly,” Rabiei noted.

At least one tanker carrying fuel loaded at an Iranian port has set sail for Venezuela, according to vessel tracking data from Refinitiv Eikon last week, which could help ease an acute scarcity of gasoline in the South American country.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Mousavi warned Monday that that the US will receive a “serious response” from Iran if it carries out any action against its oil tankers.

“I hope that the Americans will not do anything stupid, because that will face a serious response from Iran,” the semi-official ISNA news agency quoted him as saying.

“The activities of these ships are completely official and legal. In fact, this is being done within the framework of free trade, and there is no legal obstacle to doing this legitimate trade.”

He described threats by US officials as “shameless,” stressing that “any US response against the legal navigation of our ships will be met with a decisive response, and America shall bear its repercussions.”

Iran complained to the United Nations on Sunday and summoned the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, who represents US interests in the country, over possible measures Washington could take against the fuel shipment to Venezuela.

A senior official in President Donald Trump’s administration told Reuters on Thursday Washington was considering measures it could take in response to Iran.

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi passed on a message to the ambassador warning against any US threat against the tankers, according to a report on the foreign ministry website.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also wrote a letter to UN chief Antonio Guterres warning that any American measures against the shipment would be dangerous, illegal and a form of piracy, the report added.

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World

Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration to End Legal Protections for Haitians, Syrians

The sun sets on the US Supreme Court building after a stormy day in Washington, US, November 11, 2022. REUTERS/Leah Millis
The sun sets on the US Supreme Court building after a stormy day in Washington, US, November 11, 2022. REUTERS/Leah Millis
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Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration to End Legal Protections for Haitians, Syrians

The sun sets on the US Supreme Court building after a stormy day in Washington, US, November 11, 2022. REUTERS/Leah Millis
The sun sets on the US Supreme Court building after a stormy day in Washington, US, November 11, 2022. REUTERS/Leah Millis

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to end legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disaster in Haiti and Syria, exposing hundreds of thousands more people to potential deportation.

The 6-3 decision overturns lower court orders and allows the Department of Homeland Security to swiftly end temporary protected status, a program that protects a total of 1.3 million people from 17 countries.

The Trump administration argued judges that can't second-guess immigrations officials' decisions about the protections, which were intended to be temporary.

Immigration attorneys said the countries remain unsafe to return, and the administration ended them in an unlawfully hasty process tinged by racial animus. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump amplified false rumors that Haitian immigrants were abducting and eating dogs and cats.

The Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court after judges postponed the end of the program for about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. The high court sided with the administration before and allowed the end of the program for people from Venezuela.

Federal authorities deny that racial animus played a role. They also cited a Supreme Court decision from Trump’s first term that rejected bias claims based on his social media posts and upheld a travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries.

DHS has ended the protections people from 13 countries since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, including some that had been in place for more than a decade, The AP news reported.

The terminations were made even though countries like Haiti and Syria remain dangerous, immigration attorneys said. Four Haitian women who were deported from the United States in February were found beheaded and dumped in a river several months later, lawyers said in court documents.

The House passed legislation with a rare bipartisan vote in April that would extend protections for Haitians, though the bill has languished in the Senate.

The US first granted protections to Haitians in 2010 after a catastrophic earthquake, and extended them multiple times amid ongoing gang violence that has displaced more than a million people, according to court documents.

Syrians, meanwhile, were first granted protected status in 2012, during a civil war that lasted for more than a decade before the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government in late 2024.

TPS was created by Congress in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters, civil strife and other instability. It allows people already in the country to stay with work permits in increments of up to 18 months, but it doesn’t provide a path to citizenship.

World

Macron: French Navy Intercepted Another Russian 'Shadow Fleet' Tanker

France's President Emmanuel Macron addresss the press at the end of the meeting of state leaders of the European Group of Five (E5) and the NATO Secretary General, on June 24, 2026 at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP)
France's President Emmanuel Macron addresss the press at the end of the meeting of state leaders of the European Group of Five (E5) and the NATO Secretary General, on June 24, 2026 at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP)
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Macron: French Navy Intercepted Another Russian 'Shadow Fleet' Tanker

France's President Emmanuel Macron addresss the press at the end of the meeting of state leaders of the European Group of Five (E5) and the NATO Secretary General, on June 24, 2026 at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP)
France's President Emmanuel Macron addresss the press at the end of the meeting of state leaders of the European Group of Five (E5) and the NATO Secretary General, on June 24, 2026 at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP)

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that his country's navy had intercepted an oil tanker as it transited near the coast of Sicily, in what he called his country's latest action against the 'shadow fleet' Russia uses to ship oil and gas and ⁠to skirt Western ⁠sanctions.

"This new action against the shadow fleet, conducted days after a similar operation by Britain, shows Europeans' determination," Macron said in ⁠a post on Instagram, adding that the interception took place on Tuesday.

"We will not let the shadow fleet evade sanctions and finance the Russian war effort," Reuters quoted Macron as saying.

Macron posted a video showing Marines descending from helicopters onto the ⁠Deliver.

⁠France has intercepted at least five tankers it says are part of Russia's shadow fleet, old vessels that Russia has relied on to ship oil and gas and to skirt Western sanctions.

Moscow has called such actions illegal.

World

Ukraine Drone Attacks Kill 5 in Russia, Crimea

FILE PHOTO: Explosion at Moscow oil refinery after Ukrainian drone attacks on the city, in Moscow, Russia june 18, 2026, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. SOCIAL MEDIA/via REUTERS
FILE PHOTO: Explosion at Moscow oil refinery after Ukrainian drone attacks on the city, in Moscow, Russia june 18, 2026, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. SOCIAL MEDIA/via REUTERS
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Ukraine Drone Attacks Kill 5 in Russia, Crimea

FILE PHOTO: Explosion at Moscow oil refinery after Ukrainian drone attacks on the city, in Moscow, Russia june 18, 2026, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. SOCIAL MEDIA/via REUTERS
FILE PHOTO: Explosion at Moscow oil refinery after Ukrainian drone attacks on the city, in Moscow, Russia june 18, 2026, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video. SOCIAL MEDIA/via REUTERS

Ukrainian drone strikes killed five people, including two children, in Russia and on the Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula, in attacks that also triggered a fire at a major oil depot in the country's south, local officials said Thursday.

Ukraine has stepped up strikes on Russia in recent months in retaliation for Moscow's near-daily barrages of drones and missiles throughout its five-year offensive, AFP reported.

Russia's defense ministry said it downed 269 Ukrainian drones overnight over Russia and Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.

In Crimea, which Ukraine is trying to cut-off from Russian logistics and supply routes, the Russia-appointed governor Sergey Aksyonov said: "Two people, including a child, were killed and two others wounded ... as a result of overnight enemy attacks.

Drone strikes also killed two people in the border Bryansk region -- a 23-year-old driver and 15-year-old girl -- and one in the Belgorod region, regional authorities said.

Kyiv insists that the Ukrainian army first and foremost targets military installations and energy infrastructure, in a bid to deprive the Kremlin's war chest of vital fossil fuel revenues.

In Russia's southern Krasnodar Krai region, debris from a drone strike triggered a fire at an oil depot, authorities said Thursday.

"Following the fall of UAV debris, a fire broke out at the Poltavskaya oil depot," Aleksandr Kharitonov, head of Krasnoarmeysk district in Krasnodar Krai, wrote on Russia's state-run Max platform.

Ukraine's air force said Russia fired 90 drones and an Iskander missile -- launched from Crimea -- at Ukraine overnight, adding that 83 of the drones had been shot down.

But Ukraine's state railway operator said a crew member was killed in a strike on a train in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.