"Iran Lying to Drive Up Oil Prices"... Airstrikes After Midterms?

[Anchor]

U.S. President Donald Trump has claimed that Iran is spreading false propaganda to drive up oil prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections. Reports have also emerged that the U.S. has prepared concrete plans to strike Iran again once the midterms are over.

Reporting from Washington, this is correspondent Jeon Byeong-nam.

[Reporter]

This is a post shared by U.S. President Donald Trump on his social media.

He claimed that "Iran is doing everything it can to drive up oil prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections," adding that "they are making up many things, including false claims that tanker attacks were successful."

He stated that it is shocking that the Democrats are indifferent to the fact that 75,000 protesters have lost their lives at the hands of the Iranian regime in less than seven months.

This is interpreted as an attempt to emphasize that Iran is stoking anxieties over oil shipments at a time when high international oil prices are acting as an adverse factor for the Republican Party in the midterms.

Reports have also surfaced that the U.S. has prepared concrete plans to strike Iran alongside Israel following the midterm elections.

Citing U.S. government officials, The New York Times reported that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a top-secret visit to Israel on October 19, where he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss plans for attacking Iran.

It is reported that targets on the list include Iran's energy infrastructure and nuclear facilities such as the so-called "Pickaxe Mountain."

In response, Iran has sharply pushed back, warning that if it suffers an airstrike, it will expand the front across the entire Middle East and include AI data centers in the Gulf region as targets for attack.

It even unveiled underground drone facilities.

[Amir Hatami / Commander-in-Chief of the Iranian Army : We have expanded our (drone) production facilities. Thank God, our drone stockpiles are also very abundant.]

Amidst these developments, Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed on October 22, local time, that they had struck Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Defense and airports.

[Yahya Saree / Military Spokesperson for the Houthi Rebels : With the help of God, the Houthi forces have carried out four military operations over the past 48 hours using multiple ballistic missiles and drones.]

Earlier, the Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation announced the previous day that King Fahd International Airport had been struck in an attack, leaving two people dead and eight others injured.

(Photo: Park Eun-ha | Video Editing: Kim Ho-jin | Design: Kim Na-mi)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.