Israeli Strikes on Tehran Fuel Depots Blanket the Capital in Smoke
Yemen Herald News 
Israeli aircraft struck oil storage depots and fuel handling sites in and around Tehran on Saturday 7 March 2026, setting off fires that burned across the Iranian capital and left it under a heavy pall of smoke. Axios reported that the strikes hit some thirty fuel depots and went considerably further than American officials had expected when Israel notified Washington in advance.
That gap between expectation and execution produced the first significant public disagreement between the two governments since the war began eight days earlier. American officials quoted at the time said they were concerned that attacks on infrastructure serving ordinary Iranians could backfire strategically, rallying Iranian society behind the government in Tehran, and that they would push oil prices higher at a moment when Washington was trying to contain them.
The environmental effect was immediate and visible. Images from Tehran showed thick black smoke hanging over the city and flames burning for miles along the depot lines. Residents reported difficulty breathing, and oil-tainted black rainfall was recorded dozens of kilometres from the capital, staining buildings and vehicles. Al Jazeera reported that the strikes on fuel sites were intended, in the assessment of critics, to break the resilience of the civilian population.
Human Rights Watch returned to the strikes in a report published on 14 April, arguing that the attacks on oil depots had endangered the environment and public health in the areas affected. The organisation said the consequences of burning large volumes of refined fuel in a densely populated city extended well beyond the military value of the targets.
The strikes came two days after President Donald Trump had rejected any negotiated end to the war. On 6 March he said there would be no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender, a formulation he capitalised in his own statement. He made the remark hours after Iran’s president had announced that unspecified countries were attempting mediation, and it was widely read as closing off the diplomatic route those efforts had opened.
Trump added that once Iran had surrendered and what he called an acceptable leader had been selected, the United States and its partners would work to rebuild the country and make it stronger than before. The State Department was at the same time advising and assisting American citizens leaving countries across the Middle East as the fighting spread.
The war had begun in late February. American and Israeli forces struck targets inside Iran from 28 February 2026, and Iran responded with sustained waves of drones and ballistic missiles directed at Israel, at American installations and at the Gulf Cooperation Council states that host them. Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates all reported impacts on their territory.
Iranian officials made energy a central element of their response. Tehran said during the campaign that not a single litre of oil would leave the Gulf if Iran’s own exports were halted, a threat aimed directly at the shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian forces struck a Kuwaiti oil refinery during the same period, and later in March an Iranian missile hit an Israeli refinery at the northern port city of Haifa.
The reciprocal targeting of energy infrastructure marked a distinct phase of the war. Refineries, depots and export terminals are large, fixed and difficult to defend, and striking them imposes costs that are felt by civilians and by global markets simultaneously. Each side accused the other of attacking civilian objects while describing its own strikes as legitimate attacks on war-supporting infrastructure.
Oil markets responded sharply to the Tehran strikes. Traders had already priced in disruption to Iranian exports, and the destruction of domestic storage raised the prospect of fuel shortages inside Iran itself, where subsidised petrol has long been politically sensitive and where queues at filling stations have historically preceded periods of unrest.
Iranian domestic politics were unsettled in other ways during the same days. Reporting on 8 March said clerics had reached a consensus on a successor to the country’s supreme leader, an account that could not be independently confirmed and that Iranian officials did not publicly address at the time.
For the Gulf states the escalation was unwelcome on every measure. Their air defences were absorbing daily Iranian fire, their airspace was repeatedly closed, and their governments were trying to avoid formal entry into a war being fought partly from their territory. Gulf officials pressed both Washington and Tehran for de-escalation throughout March without visible effect.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres urged de-escalation after renewed attacks on shipping during the same period, and international shipping bodies warned that the combination of strikes on energy infrastructure and attacks on commercial vessels was making parts of the region effectively uninsurable for civilian traffic.
Yemen sits at the far end of the same corridor. The Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab strait carry the traffic that feeds Yemeni ports, and the country imports the overwhelming majority of its food and fuel by sea. Any sustained disruption to Gulf and Red Sea shipping raises import costs in a country where humanitarian agencies estimate 22.3 million people already need assistance.
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