TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran’s powerful parliament speaker warned on Wednesday about the possible invasion of an Iranian island with the support of an unnamed regional country.

“Based on some intelligence reports, Iran’s enemies are preparing to occupy one of the Iranian islands with support from one of the regional states,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote in an X post written in both Persian and Arabic.

“Our forces are monitoring all enemy movements, and if they take any step, all the vital infrastructure of that regional state will be targeted with relentless, unceasing attacks.”

United States President Donald Trump is moving thousands of airborne troops and extra marines to the Gulf amid speculation that he might order a ground invasion to either seize Iranian oil assets in the Gulf or secure the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

One possible target is Kharg Island, which handles almost all of Iran’s crude exports.

Trump has called it a “little oil island that sits there, so totally unprotected.”

Earlier on Wednesday, an unnamed Iranian military official told local media that Iran would target shipping in the Red Sea in the event of a ground invasion, which would dramatically widen the conflict and disrupt global trade.

Iran arms and supports the Houthi rebel group in Yemen which has previously targeted shipping travelling through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a conduit to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

“If the enemy attempts a ground operation on Iranian islands or anywhere else on our territory, or if it seeks to impose costs on Iran through naval maneuvers in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, we will open other fronts as a ‘surprise,’” the official was quoted as saying by the Tasnim News Agency.

“The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is among the most strategic straits in the world, and Iran has both the will and the capability to pose a fully credible threat against it,” the official said.

Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which lies off Iran, has slowed to a trickle because of the conflict, disrupting roughly 20 percent of global oil supplies.

Crude prices have spiked to around $100 a barrel as a result of what the International Energy Agency has called “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.”

Missile shield

Meanwhile, Israel’s military said air defenses responded to missile attacks from Iran on Thursday that according to medics left six people lightly wounded and caused some damage.

A spokesperson for Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency medical service said paramedics were providing medical treatment to “six people who were lightly injured by blast effects,” updating an earlier toll of two injured.

Israel launched strikes across Iran on Thursday, hours after Trump said Tehran wanted a deal to end the nearly four-week war despite its top diplomat rejecting any talks with Washington.

Two people were killed and three were wounded by falling debris after air defenses intercepted a ballistic missile on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, the government media office said on Thursday.

“The incident resulted in the deaths of two unidentified individuals, three injuries, and damage to a number of cars,” the Abu Dhabi Media Office said in a post on X.

Israel strikes

Lebanese state media reported on Wednesday that Israeli strikes killed at least six people in a town and a Palestinian refugee camp in the southern Sidon area, and three more in another town.

Israel has stepped up its campaign against Tehran-backed militant group Hezbollah, whose rocket attacks on 2 March pulled Lebanon into the regional war, triggered by US-Israeli strikes on Iran.

Citing the health ministry, Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said four people were killed in an “Israeli enemy raid” on the town of Adloun, and another two in a strike on an apartment in the Mieh Mieh refugee camp that left four wounded.

In another area of southern Lebanon, the NNA earlier said an Israeli raid on the town of Habboush killed at least three people and wounded 18 others.