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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The U.S. military early Wednesday reimposed a blockade on Iranian ports over Tehran’s attacks on ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, sparking new strikes on nations hosting American forces as an interim deal to end the war further unraveled.
Days of retaliatory strikes across the Middle East by Iran — and both nations’ attempts to vie for control of the waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas passes during peacetime — threaten to push the region back to all-out war.
The U.S. first imposed the blockade in mid-April and then lifted it in mid-June, a day after signing the interim deal that set a 60-day period for negotiations over issues like Iran’s nuclear program, but talks have stalled as fighting over the strait has intensified.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard threatened Wednesday to halt all energy exports from the Middle East over the blockade.
“The export of oil and gas from the region will be either for everyone or for no one,” it said.
When U.S. President Donald Trump announced the return of the blockade Monday, he also said he would impose a 20% fee on ships passing through the strait. But he dropped the plan to collect fees hours before resuming the blockade, citing requests from allies in the Persian Gulf.
Both US and Iran launched attacks as blockade reimposed
The U.S. carried out another wave of strikes as it reimposed the blockade, striking dozens of targets over seven hours, the U.S. military’s Central Command said Wednesday.
Missile alert warnings went out in Bahrain and Kuwait early Wednesday morning as they faced incoming Iranian fire, something that’s been a daily occurrence, further straining a ceasefire in the war.
U.S. Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads Central Command, said in a statement that Iran had launched dozens of missiles and drones at neighboring Gulf Arab countries.
“U.S. forces are holding Iran accountable for unwarranted aggression that continues to endanger innocent lives,” Cooper said.
There are at least 19 U.S. warships in the Arabian Sea, including two aircraft carriers and an amphibious assault ship with more than 1,000 Marines aboard. Central Command also said in a social media post that there are “hundreds of military aircraft operating across the Middle East.”
When the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran effectively shut the passage by attacking and threatening ships. That sent the price of oil, fertilizer and other goods soaring.
Iran has more recently attacked ships moving through the strait on a route near Oman overseen by the U.S. military that is outside Tehran’s control, setting off the recent violence. The U.S. has threatened to reopen the strait by force — but experts say that would require a much bigger armada if not tens of thousands of ground troops.
Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, criticized America’s ongoing attacks targeting his country.
“The U.S. is the aggressor, not the victim,” he wrote to the world body’s leader, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
Trump says he’s replacing the fees with Gulf investments
Trump said Tuesday that he was called by the region’s “kings and emirs,” who suggested an alternate arrangement to charging ships fees to pass through the strait like the president proposed a day earlier.
“They said we’d love to do it a different way. We’d love to invest in the United States with billions and billions of dollars,” Trump told reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office.
Trump said he preferred that arrangement to charging tolls “because I don’t think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the strait.”
It was unclear if the investment deals would be new commitments relative to what Trump announced after a visit last year to the Middle East.
Trump’s plan to charge fees would have been a change to longstanding American policy and a departure from U.S. promises that the strait would remain open to all without tolls.
Trump told Fox News Channel on Tuesday night that more U.S. strikes against Iran were coming over the next two days and that bridges and power plants could be targets by next week unless negotiations resume. Already, the U.S. has struck at least one bridge.
“You better make a deal, or you’re not going to have anything left,” Trump warned.
Strikes and counterstrikes resume across the Mideast
U.S. Central Command said it struck several areas in Iran earlier Tuesday; Tehran acknowledged the strikes but provided no overall casualty or damage assessments.
Hours after the U.S. said it ended its strikes, the Iranian city of Bushehr on the Persian Gulf was hit in at least four locations, the IRNA news agency reported. Explosions in the southwestern city of Ahvaz and the southern port city of Bandar Abbas also were reported by Iranian state media Tuesday night.
The attacks again raised the possibility that Gulf Arab states were retaliating against Iran without discussing it in public.
Kuwait separately said an Iranian attack wounded four members of its navy Tuesday and set a building on fire.
The interim peace deal is in peril
Under the interim deal, Iran agreed that passage through the strait would remain free of charge for 60 days — but the agreement left open what would happen after. Iran asserts it has the right to manage traffic and potentially charge fees. The U.S. has disputed that.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, briefly topped $87 early Tuesday, still well below the nearly $120 reached at the height of the war. The price dipped to $78 in the aftermath of Trump’s announcement that he had changed course.
Regional mediators meanwhile are still trying to get the United States and Iran back to the negotiating table, according to two regional officials.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the delicate diplomatic process, said Pakistan-led mediation was working around the clock to reactivate the ceasefire.
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Toropin and Binkley reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Samy Magdy in Cairo; Will Weissert and Ben Finley in Washington; and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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