US launches new strikes on Iran, military says

The U.S. military is currently striking Iran in a new round of attacks Wednesday night, military officials said.
The fresh attacks come hours after President Trump said he thought a three-week-old cease-fire between the two countries was “over.” Iranian state media reported that explosions had been heard in at least three port cities along the country’s southeastern coast.

The latest strikes, the U.S. Central Command said, were intended to undercut Iran’s ability to threaten ships in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for global energy supplies that has become a key issue in the conflict. The U.S. military called the attacks retaliation for “recent unjustified aggression against commercial shipping and civilian crews.”

But Mr. Trump said earlier Wednesday that while the United States would probably hit Iran “hard,” he did not expect a return to all-out war. “I don’t think it’s going to start again. I think it’s going to go very quickly,” he told reporters at a NATO summit in Turkey.

Read also: Oil nears $80 after Trump declares Iran ceasefire over

Even before the strikes, the temporary truce in the four-month conflict between the United States and Iran had appeared on the verge of collapse, with each side accusing the other of repeatedly violating the terms of the cease-fire.

Many of those accusations have centered on the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has asserted that it has oversight of the flow of traffic there, and the United States has declared the waterway will return to its prewar status of free transit.

There have been repeated skirmishes since the cease-fire was signed last month. The latest — strikes and counter-strikes that began Tuesday — stemmed from attacks on three commercial vessels that the United States blamed on Iran.

Iran did not claim responsibility for those strikes on the vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, but it has asserted that the temporary truce gives Tehran oversight of the economically vital waterway and demanded that vessels use its preferred routes.

Following the attacks on the commercial vessels, the United States on Tuesday revoked a sanctions waiver on Iran’s oil industry — a provision of the cease-fire that had been a major victory for Iran — and launched a series of strikes against Iranian military targets. In response, Iran’s armed forces said that they had attacked American military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait earlier Wednesday, although no major damage was reported.

Shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has once more come to a halt, driving oil prices to their highest levels in two weeks.

Influence over the strait has provided Tehran with newfound leverage. Using underwater mines, speedy attack boats and land-based missile launchers, Iran has severely curtailed traffic through the strait, putting intense strain on the economies of U.S. allies in the region like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are major exporters of oil and gas.

The temporary truce was intended to reopen the strait and halt the fighting, but left some of the thorniest issues, particularly Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and the future of its nuclear program, to be sorted out during a 60-day negotiation period.

On Wednesday, however, Iranian media outlets close to the country’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps published editorials calling for “the official end” to the deal.

As the multiday funeral services continued for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader killed on the first day of the war, Mr. Trump boasted that all of Iran’s leaders were “gone,” before adding that he was himself “No. 1 on the kill list for Iran.” A social media account belonging to the supreme leader’s successor, his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, posted a doctored image depicting a snake emanating from Mr. Trump’s signature on the cease-fire deal.