Australia stocks fell to a three-month low while gold and oil surged after Israel reportedly launched a retaliatory strike on Iran, fuelling fears of a widening Middle East war.
Iran’s air defences shot at suspected drones and several explosions were reported near a military base and nuclear site near the central city of Isfahan while another group of drones were shot down near Tabriz, 800 kilometres further north.The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed there had been no damage to nuclear sites, while Tehran said it had no plans for an immediate retaliation against Israel.
Tension is high in the Middle East over possible Israeli retaliation after Iran fired more than 300 armed drones and missiles at Israel last weekend, the first time Tehran has targeted the country directly from its own soil. “If inflation remains high, such lofty expectations could topple, which could lead to a correlated sell-off of assets, from bonds to stocks to crypto assets,” IMF financial counsellor Tobias Adrian said.
“From their recent highs global and Australian shares have fallen by around 4 per cent to 5 per cent and the short-term risks remain tilted towards further falls.”The New York TimesIsraeli forces have conducted scores of air strikes against Iran-affiliated forces as part of an increasingly overt confrontation across the Middle East during the past decade.
That action was in retaliation for Israel earlier killing senior Iranian commanders in a strike against an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria. Hossein Dalirian, a spokesperson for an Iranian government cyberspace agency who as a journalist had ties to Iranian defence officials, said on the social media platform X that several small “quadcopter” drones had been shot down. Media reports claimed that the drones appeared to originate from within Iran.
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