
Argentine President Javier Milei's willingness to send troops to the Middle East if requested by the United States has fuelled growing concern in Argentina, a country that has historically maintained an equidistant stance on international conflicts and where fears of possible reprisals are emerging.

US President Donald Trump announced on Monday a five-day moratorium on the threatened attacks against Iran's energy infrastructure, hours before the 48-hour ultimatum he issued on Saturday demanding Tehran reopen the Strait of Hormuz was set to expire.

A social media post by Republican operative Marc Zell urging the Trump administration to reconsider its position on the Falklands/Malvinas and support Argentina's sovereignty claim triggered a wave of coverage across Argentine media over the past week, despite being based on a false premise and carrying no official backing from Washington.

Iran warned on Sunday that it will treat energy and oil infrastructure across the Middle East as “legitimate targets” if the United States attacks its power plants, responding to President Donald Trump's ultimatum issued late Saturday.

The United States is deploying roughly 5,000 Marines and half a dozen warships toward the Persian Gulf in the largest force expansion since the war against Iran began on February 28. The buildup comes as American aircraft intensify strikes against Iranian positions along the coastline and islands of the Strait of Hormuz, the maritime chokepoint through which approximately 20% of global oil transits and which Iran has effectively closed since the start of the conflict.

Britain's Ministry of Defence condemned on Saturday the launch of two Iranian intermediate-range ballistic missiles at the joint US-UK military base on Diego Garcia, in the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. Neither projectile struck the installation.

US President Donald Trump escalated his rhetoric against NATO allies on Friday, lambasting them as cowards for refusing to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway that has remained effectively closed since the start of the war with Iran. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump declared that without the US military, NATO amounts to nothing more than a paper tiger, and warned that Washington would not forget the alliance's stance.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested on Thursday that an air campaign alone would not be enough to bring down Iran’s regime, as the conflict entered a new phase marked by strikes on Gulf energy facilities and renewed warnings over the Strait of Hormuz.

The war involving Iran, Israel and the United States escalated sharply on Wednesday with a strike on South Pars, the Iranian side of the world’s largest natural gas field, which it shares with Qatar. Reuters reported that the hit on the site marked a new phase in the conflict by targeting major Iranian energy infrastructure for the first time in this war, and was followed by Iranian threats and attacks against energy targets across the Gulf.

Joe Kent, director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, resigned on Tuesday with immediate effect, saying he could not support Washington’s war against Iran in what became the first high-level public break inside Donald Trump’s national security apparatus since the offensive began. Kent said Tehran had posed no “imminent threat” to the United States.