Iran attacks resume across Gulf hours after Trump ceasefire announcement

Iranian strikes hit Gulf targets again on Wednesday morning, hours after US President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire meant to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. According to Euronews, the United Arab Emirates reported an attack on the Habshan gas complex that triggered fires after an interception, injuring two Emiratis and an Indian national and prompting a production suspension. Bahrain also reported renewed blasts and earlier damage in Sitra linked to intercepted drones and falling shrapnel.

The ceasefire’s first problem is procedural: neither Washington nor Tehran publicly specified when it began. That ambiguity is not a technicality in a theatre where air-defence alerts, diverted flights and refinery shutdowns turn into immediate price signals. Euronews reporters in Dubai described repeated air-raid alerts and “renewed daily fighter-jet defence activity” over the city; in Doha, intercept booms were loud enough to shake buildings and inbound flights were briefly diverted. A truce that cannot be timed cannot be priced, which is why the region’s commercial systems—shipping schedules, insurance cover, fuel procurement—default to worst-case assumptions.

The second problem is that the ceasefire is narrower than the war around it. Netanyahu’s office, Euronews reports, backed Trump’s decision to suspend strikes against Iran for two weeks, while explicitly separating that from Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon. That creates a familiar loophole: if one front is paused while another continues, the actors most exposed to retaliation—Gulf states hosting US assets and energy infrastructure—remain on the hook. The Habshan incident shows what that looks like in practice: even “successful” interceptions can still shut facilities when debris lands on critical equipment.

The Strait of Hormuz is the deal’s advertised prize, but it is also Iran’s most credible lever. The ceasefire is framed as reopening a chokepoint; the attacks underline that reopening is not a switch a president flips, but a chain of private decisions by shipowners, insurers and charterers who will not sail on press releases. In the Gulf, the cost of being wrong is a burned plant, a stranded cargo, or a crew that refuses to sail again.

On Wednesday, the UAE suspended output at Habshan after fires caused by intercepted debris, while residents in Dubai and Doha received fresh air-raid alerts. The ceasefire was still being described as “two weeks” long, even as the region’s most valuable infrastructure was already operating under attack warnings.