A commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has said the Strait of Hormuz is closed and warned that any ship trying to pass through will be attacked, according to Iranian state media.
"The strait is closed. If anyone tries to pass, the heroes of the Revolutionary Guard and the regular navy will set fire to these ships," Ebrahim Jabari, a senior adviser to the IRGC commander-in-chief, said on Monday, Al Jazeera reported.
Tehran has targeted critical infrastructure for the world's energy production as part of its retaliation for the Israeli and American bombing campaign that began on Saturday and killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top officials.
"We will also attack oil pipelines and will not allow a single drop of oil to leave the region. The price of oil will reach $200 in the coming days," Jabbari said in a post on the IRGC's Telegram channel.
"The Americans, with debts of thousands of billions of dollars, are dependent on the region's oil, but they should know that not a single drop of oil will reach them," it was also quoted by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
The Strait of Hormuz, which lies between Iran and Oman, is one of the world's most critical oil transit routes, with approximately 20 percent of global oil supplies passing through it.
Any disruption there will further drive up crude oil prices and heighten fears of a regional escalation.
Energy prices rose sharply earlier on Monday as disruptions to tanker traffic through the strait and damage to production facilities raised uncertainty about how US-Israeli attacks on Iran would affect supplies to the global economy.
The biggest blow was to natural gas prices, which rose by almost 50 percent in Europe and nearly 40 percent in Asia, after QatarEnergy, a major supplier, halted production of liquefied natural gas after its LNG facilities were attacked.
Earlier, Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura oil refinery was also attacked by drones and its defenses shot down the incoming aircraft, a military spokesman told the state-run Saudi Press Agency.
The refinery has a capacity of more than half a million barrels of crude oil per day.
In response, the US said it would take action to mitigate the rise in energy prices due to the war with Iran, according to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. /Telegrafi/
