Gaza fuel running short after Israel closes borders amid Iran war

CAIRO/JERUSALEM, March 2 (Reuters) - Gaza is rapidly running out of its limited fuel supply ​and stocks of food staples may become tight, officials say, after Israel blocked the ‌entry of fuel and goods into the war-shattered territory, citing fighting with Iran.

Israel's military closed all Gaza border crossings on Saturday after announcing air strikes on Iran carried out jointly with the United States.

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Israeli authorities said late Monday night ​that they would reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to Gaza on Tuesday, ​for "gradual entry of humanitarian aid" into the strip without saying how much.

Israeli authorities ⁠previously said the crossings could not be operated safely during war.

FEW DAYS' WORTH OF SUPPLIES

Gaza is ​wholly dependent on fuel brought in by trucks from Israel and Egypt and a lack of fresh ​supplies would put hospital operations at risk and threaten water and sanitation services, local officials say. Most Palestinians in Gaza are internally displaced after Israel's two-year war with Hamas militants.

"I expect we have maybe a couple of days' running time," ​said Karuna Herrmann, the Jerusalem director of the United Nations Office for Project Services, which manages fuel distribution in Gaza.

Amjad ​Al-Shawa, a Palestinian aid leader in Gaza, who works with the U.N. and NGOs, estimated fuel supplies could last ‌three ⁠or four days, while stocks of vegetables, flour and other essentials could also soon run out if the crossings remain shut.

Reuters was unable to independently verify those estimates.

Israel's COGAT military agency, which controls access to Gaza, said that enough food had been delivered to the territory since the start of ​an October truce to ​provide for the population.

"(The) ⁠existing stock is expected to suffice for an extended period," COGAT said, without elaborating. It declined to comment on potential fuel shortages.

The truce was part ​of a broader U.S.-backed plan to end the war that involves reopening the ​Rafah border crossing ⁠with Egypt, increasing the flow of aid into the enclave, and rebuilding it.

Hamada Abu Laila, a displaced Palestinian in Gaza, said the closures were stoking fear of a return of famine, which gripped parts of ⁠the ​enclave last year after Israel blocked aid deliveries for 11 ​weeks.

Further thoughts on Trump's Iran war - Trita Parsi

Greetings,

I wanted to share with you some additional thoughts and observations on Trump and Israel's war of choice with Iran:

1. The pattern of the Trump administration's conduct - hapless efforts to justify the war, ever-shifting war objectives, exaggerated gestures to signal control - all suggest that, only a few days into the war, Trump has already lost control.

2. 19th-century Prussian strategist Helmuth von Moltke famously said that "No plan survives first contact with the enemy." But this goes beyond that. Trump's plan A came crashing down only 48h into this war. The administration's plan - based on an exaggerated view of Iran's relative weakness - was that the theorcacy in Iran would implode shortly after the assassination of the Supreme Leader. By Monday morning, before the markets opened, the war was supposed to be over, and Trump would be basking in yet another glorious victory, proving all his skeptics wrong. But no such implosion has occurred. Nor are we seeing signs that it is likely to occur in the short term.

3. As a result, it is increasingly Iran that is defining the geography of this war, its intensity, and most crucially, its length in time. This does not mean that Iran is winning the war - there is no evidence of that at all. But Iran's prospects of getting Trump to lose the war or cut it short are increasing precisely because Trump is scrambling for a Plan B. Indeed, in comparison, George W. Bush's Plan A in Iraq didn't start falling apart until August 2005 - five months into the war.

4. As the failure of Plan A became clear, and as Trump realized that the Iranians would not agree to a ceasefire, Trump started shifting his messaging. Knowing that the Iranians thought Trump could not sustain the war for long, Trump suddenly started saying that the war may go on for four weeks - seeking to disabuse the Iranians from the idea that time is on their side.

5. Rather than declaring victory (having killed the Supreme Leader), Trump has decided to throw good money after bad, but now with an even more shocking plan: Arming Kurdish separatists in Iran and, most likely, also sending US troops into Iran through the Kurdish areas together with Israeli special forces. What was supposed to be a 48-hour air campaign is fast deteriorating into a land invasion with US troops on the ground.

6. Neither the Iranians nor Trump will back down in the next few days. Trump thinks he can turn the tables on Iran with his Kurdish plan, and Tehran believes a land invasion will help unify the population against invaders and separatists. Both believe they can absorb and sustain the casualties, which likely will be massive. Yet, not a single death in this unnecessary war can be justified.

Sincerely,
Trita Parsi

PS. I lay some of these points out in an interview with BreakingPoints: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7CKQj00LkQ&t=533s
 

When the Wells Run Dry

In November 2025, Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian issued a warning that should have made global headlines: Tehran, a metropolis of 15 million people, might have to face rationing and partial evacuation. Not because of missiles. Not because of riots. Because the water is gone.

This was not a specialist’s hypothesis or a distant catastrophic scenario. It was, in his own words, a “necessity” dictated by the unprecedented collapse of water reserves and chronic drought. The reservoirs supplying the capital have fallen to 12 percent of their capacity. Groundwater tables, pumped relentlessly for decades, are subsiding by up to 30 centimeters per year, cracking buildings and roads as the city literally sinks into itself.

The summer of 2024 had already sounded the alarm: daily water cuts, thermometers exceeding 40 degrees Celsius, millions of Iranians suffocating in punishing heat while taps remained dry. Desperate, the president offered a one million dollar reward to anyone proposing a viable solution. To date, no one has cashed that check.

While international attention remains fixed on geopolitical tensions, Israeli strikes against Iranian interests, regime change threats from Washington, and nuclear standoffs, a silent but fundamental factor has been undermining the country from within for years. More than sanctions, which strangle the economy. More than theocracy, which many contest. More than bombardments, always feared. The greatest existential crisis facing Iran has a technical name that hydrologists have been repeating in vain for a decade: hydrological bankruptcy.

A bankruptcy that cannot be negotiated at the International Monetary Fund. A bankruptcy that cannot be resolved by a change of flag or regime. A bankruptcy inscribed in the soil, in the subsoil, in every drop of an aquifer that decades of mismanagement, questionable technocratic choices, and implacable American sanctions have emptied faster than nature can refill it.

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE.

Iran Prepared for an Existential War. How Much are Trump and Israel Willing to Gamble?

by Jeremy Schahill and Murtaza Hussain/Drop Site News

On Saturday, President Donald Trump went to TruthSocial to announce the U.S. and Israel had been successful in assassinating Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote. “He was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do.”

The New York Times followed with a breathless account published Sunday purporting to tell the secret story of how the CIA and Israel hunted down Khamenei, “tracking him for months” and “gaining more confidence about his locations and his patterns,” before pinpointing his location so he could be killed. “People briefed on the operation described it as a product of good intelligence and months of preparations,” the report claimed.

Khamenei’s secret location, it turned out, was simply his office.

Read the article here.