American and Israeli strikes on Thursday pounded Iran with no sign of an end to the war in sight as unrelenting Iranian attacks on shipping traffic and energy infrastructure pushed oil above $100 a barrel.
Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei hasn't yet made a statement or been seen since being chosen to succeed his father Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the opening day of the conflict.
But Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has suggested that Tehran sought the world to recognize Iran’s “legitimate rights, payment of reparations” and international guarantees against future attacks to see an end of the war.
His comment came as US President Donald Trump reiterated his insistence that US-Israeli strikes had already practically defeated Iran.
"They are pretty much at the end of the line," he told reporters, after delivering a speech to supporters in which he declared: "We've won... we won -- in the first hour it was over."
Trump suggested that Iran’s halting of attacks was not imminent, however, promising to “finish the job” even though he claimed Iran is “virtually destroyed.”
“We don’t want to leave early do we? We’ve got to finish the job," he said at an event Wednesday in Kentucky.
In addition to attacking energy infrastructure around the region, Iran has a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway leading from the Arabian Gulf toward the Indian Ocean through which a fifth of the world's oil is transported.
With traffic in the strait effectively stopped, the price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose another 9% to more than $100 a barrel, up some 38% over what it cost when the war started.
