Iran fired on targets Fri day across the Middle East, damaging a desali nation plant and setting a refinery ablaze in Kuwait, while American and Israeli airstrikes hit the Islamic Republic as the war neared the end of its fifth week. Tehran has kept the pres sure on Israel and its Gulf Arab neighbour, despite US and Israeli insistence that Iran’s military capabilities have been all but destroyed. In a sign that part of Iran’s theocracy could be willing to negotiate, the country’s former top dip lomat published a proposal for ending the conflict in an influential American magazine. Iran’s attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure and its tight grip on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas transits in peacetime, have roiled stock markets, sent oil prices sky rocketing, and threatened to raise the cost of many basic goods, including food. Iran’s ability to wreak havoc in the global economy has proved a major strate gic advantage, and world leaders have struggled to figure out how to reopen the waterway. The UN Se curity Council was expected to look at a new proposal. Former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif — a seasoned diplo mat with long experience negotiating with the West who remains close to a pragmatic wing of Iran’s leadership — wrote on Fri day that the time has come to end the suffering on both sides. PT