DUBAI: The United States attacked Iran early Sunday morning over an Iranian strike on a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz that set the container ship ablaze and forced its crew to abandon it. Iran apparently responded with attacks targeting Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
The strait has become the key sticking point in any further negotiations between Iran and the United States to find a permanent end to the war that began back on February 28. About a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas passed through the strait before the war began. Iran's grip on it during the war led to a global energy crisis, though oil prices have sharply dropped since wartime highs of USD 120 a barrel.
The US military's Central Command said it hit some 140 targets in the strikes, far more than the last two round, and went after missile and drone launch sites, ammunition dumps, communication equipment and other sites.
The attacks “degrade Iran's ability to attack civilian mariners and commercial vessels freely transiting the strait," it said.
The new crossfire in the Persian Gulf comes days after US President Donald Trump suggested an interim deal in the Iran war was “over.”
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote online: “Iran made a poor choice. Now they pay.”
The United Arab Emirates warned the public Sunday of an incoming missile and drone attack as explosions could be heard in nearby Qatar. A missile alert sounded in Qatar shortly after the blasts. Qatar's military said in a statement it intercepted the incoming Iranian fire.
Meanwhile, missile alerts sounded in Bahrain, an island kingdom in the Persian Gulf home to the US Navy's 5th Fleet.
It wasn't immediately clear what locations were under attack in the UAE, which so far hadn't been targeted in the latest round of attacks by Iran. The latest attack on the Emirates, home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, came in May when a drone sparked a fire on the edge of the country's sole nuclear power plant.
In the Strait of Hormuz attack, a Cyprus-flagged container ship was hit by Iran and suffered “significant engineroom damage” and a civilian crew member is missing, US Central Command said.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre, overseen by the British military, said the ship had been travelling in a route hugging the shoreline of Oman. That's been the way ships have gotten in and out of the Persian Gulf while avoiding Iranian territorial waters. The ship's crew abandoned the vessel as it was ablaze, the centre said.
Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said multiple vessels “disregarded our warnings and instructions to correct their course and proceed along the approved route.” One of them “was struck by a warning shot and brought to a stop.”
Iran said that the strait would remain closed “until further notice” and said it would consider targeting “additional enemy bases in the region” if it faced more attacks.
The US attacks on Iran apparently targeted Bandar Abbas and Sirik, as well as other areas, along the shores of the strait, Iran state media reported. Iran offered no immediate information about casualties or damage.
The latest violence followed Iran and Oman's foreign ministers meeting on Saturday to discuss the strait, after days of Iranian attacks on ships and US retaliation that dealt a blow to the interim deal to end the war. The narrow strait sits in both Iran and Oman's territorial waters, but long has been considered an international waterway.
Oman said it and Iran agreed to keep talking about the Strait of Hormuz “at the technical and political levels.” However, Iran offered no statement about the strait being open to all — something sought by the Trump administration.
Iran's new supreme leader, still unseen since the war began, also vowed in his first statement since the funeral of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that Iranians would avenge his killing in the war's opening strikes on February 28.
Such revenge “is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out,” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement carried on state televisions.
US officials, speaking Friday on condition of anonymity about the current situation with Iran, said the resumption of strikes even before the latest round came as a result of what they described as a rogue faction of Iranian hard-liners who were trying to sabotage the ceasefire.
Iran has insisted its theocracy is unified under the new supreme leader.
After the US wrapped up strikes on Thursday, more attacks reportedly hit Iran, raising questions about who else may be targeting the Islamic Republic.
Israel didn't claim them, meaning the Gulf Arab states may have launched them, likely as a means to deter Iran from attacking them again. Iran on Thursday retaliated for US strikes by targeting Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar.
The strikes in Iran over two rounds of strikes last week killed at least 17 people and wounded 115 others, Iranian Health Ministry spokesperson Hossein Kermanpour said.