Turkey's top diplomat: more strikes on Iran won't end anything

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan delivered a blunt warning Friday: more military action against Iran won't fix the crisis. Speaking after an R4+E3 foreign ministers meeting in Istanbul, he said repeated attacks on Iran risk igniting a wider regional war. Military intervention, he argued, is in no way a solution — and he said it has no backing from regional leaders right now.

The ministers did find common ground on one goal: stopping the conflict from spilling across the Gulf. Fidan called for the Strait of Hormuz to stay open and urged diplomacy to end attacks on Saudi Arabia. He also flagged the economic stakes, stressing the need to wipe out the conflict's negative impact on markets.

Fidan didn't spare Israel either, criticizing its actions in Gaza and the West Bank and saying they were met with impunity.

His warnings landed against a jumpy backdrop at sea. UKMTO reported that an unknown projectile hit a tanker 7 nautical miles northeast of Limah, Oman, while it was transiting outbound through the Strait of Hormuz. The tanker shrugged it off and continued to its next port, and the agency told vessels to proceed with caution and flag anything suspicious.

In Washington, President Donald Trump was in a swaggering mood. He told reporters outside the White House that the US could, if it wanted to, just take all of the oil — and take the whole country, adding that Iran can't do much and has no money. The talk came as efforts between Washington and Tehran to halt the war have gone nowhere.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot piled on the economic worry, warning that any further escalation between Iran and the United States will only create losers and drive oil prices up. Separately, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the military would apply the Jenin refugee camp model in Hebron after a shooting attack wounded at least five people, vowing to evacuate the neighborhood the attackers came from.