Fresh US strikes pounded Iran for a ninth straight day, sharpening anxiety over the Strait of Hormuz after Iran said two oil tankers exploded and were left immobilised as they attempted to move through the crucial shipping corridor.
US Central Command said in a statement it had launched “a new wave of strikes” intended to “degrading” Iran’s capacity to attack commercial vessels operating in the strait’s vital shipping lanes. The command offered no further details.
The latest action underscored a widening cycle of attacks between Washington and Tehran after an interim ceasefire agreement signed a month ago broke down, intensifying a fight over influence in the Strait of Hormuz that has disrupted energy supplies and fuelled fears of global inflation.
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency, citing its own reporters, said US missiles hit several Iranian cities early this morning.
Tasnim reported explosions in Tabriz, Chabahar, Konarak, Bandar Mahshahr and Bandar Imam Khomeini.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington would keep striking Iran while it continued to attack global commercial shipping.
“The Strait of Hormuz are international waterways, and they continue to launch against the ships in that international waterway,” Mr Rubio said.
“As long as Iran insists on controlling an international waterway, we’re going to have to respond to that. The United States always remains open to a diplomatic solution.”
Concerns about the flow of energy supplies through the strait have persisted since the fighting resumed
Iran, for its part, said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps carried out a surprise strike on “the enemy’s special operations headquarters” in Syria’s Al-Tanf area.
The Revolutionary Guards also said they fired ballistic missiles at US aircraft at Jordan’s Aqaba airport.
Earlier, Iran carried out a drone attack targeting US military assets and equipment at Kuwait’s Al-Adiri camp and Ali Al Salem air base, Iranian state TV reported.
Kuwait’s government said a desalination plant was attacked for the second consecutive day, sparking a fire, and described it as a direct strike on vital civilian infrastructure.
Since the US and Iran returned to open hostilities—each accusing the other of repeatedly breaching the ceasefire deal—worries about the steady flow of energy supplies through the Strait of Hormuz have remained high.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations said late yesterday it received a report of a vessel on fire not far from the Omani coast, though it had not verified a cause.
Today, the Revolutionary Guards said two oil tankers exploded and were left immobilised after trying to transit what it called an unsafe southern route through Hormuz, alleging the ships had been encouraged by the US military to use that passage.
Its statement did not identify the vessels by name, flag, or crew, and provided no information on casualties.
The Guards said the waterway would remain unsafe for as long as what it called US “aggression” in the region continued, warning that “this passage will not be safe for the transit of petrochemical products, nor even a single drop of oil and gas”.
Only four vessels transited Hormuz yesterday, down from eight the day before, according to LSEG data.
The data also showed that at least three oil products’ tankers and one Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) have entered the strait since Friday to load oil.
Oil prices climbed 3% today to more than $90 a barrel.
In the latest reported American casualty, the US military said yesterday that a service member was killed on Saturday in northern Iraq—where the US has military bases—during a controlled detonation of what Central Command described as unexploded ordnance on a downed Iranian attack drone.
The US military has also said two service personnel died in Jordan and that a third remained missing in action. Yesterday, US Central Command reported that “unidentified remains” had been found at the site of Friday’s attack and that “an examination process to verify the remains is ongoing”.
Those announcements raised the total number of US military personnel killed since the war began to 17, with more than 420 others wounded.
The conflict—which began when the US and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February in an effort to disable Tehran’s nuclear and missile programmes and weaken its regional proxies—has killed thousands of people, mostly in Iran and Lebanon.
