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A drone attack targeted oil storage facilities in the Omani port of Salalah causing a massive fire on March 11, as Iran declared a new phase in the war with the United States and Israel.
Citing a security source, Oman’s official news agency said that multiple drones were shot down before others managed to hit the port’s oil storage facilities. It added that there were no casualties, noting that “authorities are working to exert all efforts to monitor and counter these brutal attacks.”
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Videos posted online showed columns of dark smoke rising from fuel tanks at Salalah, Oman’s largest maritime hub and a premier global transshipment center.
The attack on Salalah port was the second to target Oman during the day. Earlier, the country’s news agency said that a drone was shot down and another splashed in the water off the coast of the town of Duqm, where another port is located. No casualties or damage was reported.
Iran escalated its retaliatory strikes in the last few days, especially against Gulf states, with multiple infrastructure facilities hit.
Furthermore, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has threatened to attack “economic centers and banks” related to U.S. and Israeli entities in the region after what it called an attack on an Iranian bank.
A spokesperson for the Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters said on March 11 that “the enemy left our hands open to targeting economic centers and banks belonging to the United States and the Zionist regime in the region”.
It warned that “people of the region should not be within a one-kilometer radius of banks,” adding that “Americans should await our countermeasure and our painful response.”
Iran’s state broadcaster said that an Israeli attack overnight on a bank branch in Tehran was an “illegitimate and unusual act in war.” According to state television, several employees were killed in the incident.
Meanwhile, the semi-official Tasnim news agency released a list of offices and infrastructure run by top U.S. companies with Israeli links whose technology has been used for military applications, describing them as “Iran’s new targets”.
“As the scope of the regional war expands to infrastructure war, the scope of Iran’s legitimate targets expands,” the agency said.
The companies include Google, Microsoft, Palantir, IBM, Nvidia and Oracle, and the listed offices and infrastructure for cloud-based services are located in multiple Israeli cities, as well as in some Gulf countries.
Following these threats, Reuters reported that Standard Chartered has begun evacuating staff from offices in Dubai in the United Arab Emirate and told them to work from home. Separately, HSBC closed all branches in Qatar until further notice, according to the report.
The war is clearly about to enter a new phase where both sides will prioritize economic targets, from infrastructure, to energy facilities and banks.
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