The US and Iran have exchanged fresh missiles and drone strikes, further jeopardising efforts by Washington to secure a new ceasefire agreement with Tehran.
US forces fired a Hellfire missile to disable a tanker attempting to break through the American blockade of the strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, and later said they repelled Iranian reprisal attacks in the region and attacked sites on Iran’s Qeshm Island.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said it attacked the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain with missiles and drones in response to the strike on Qeshm, a claim the US military’s Central Command (Centcom) denied.
The latest exchange of fire began when Centcom said it targeted an unladen tanker – Botswana-flagged M/T Lexie – on Tuesday. Centcom said aircraft fired a missile to disable the tankers engine, as it passed through international waters toward Iran’s Kharg Island, north of the strait near Kuwait, after the crew ignored repeated warnings over a 24-hour period.
Soon after, Kuwait’s military later said its air defences were intercepting missile and drone attacks and urged the public “not to approach or touch any debris, shrapnel, or unidentified objects that may result from intercepting hostile aerial targets”. Sirens also sounded in Bahrain.
Centcom said two Iranian missiles fired at Kuwait “fell short or broke apart enroute”, and that three missiles targeting Bahrain were intercepted by US and Bahrain.
US forces also said they shot down three one-way attack drones “launched by Iran toward civilian mariners that were rightfully transiting regional waters” but gave no further details.
American forces also conducted strikes on an Iranian military ground control station on Qeshm Island.
The latest exchange of strikes underline the lack of political progress in resolving the Middle East crisis, despite upbeat claims by US secretary of state Marco Rubio in his first appearance before the Senate foreign relations committee since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran.
Rubio reiterated claims on Tuesday that a deal with Tehran was within reach, and claimed the regime had agreed to negotiate aspects of its nuclear program that it had refused to discuss even a month ago.
His comments come in direct contrast to the messaging from Iran, which has indicated it will suspend peace talks with the US in protest against Israel’s offensive in Lebanon, threatening the collapse of negotiations with Washington.
The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said: “The ceasefire between Iran and the US is unequivocally a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon. Its violation on one front is a violation of the ceasefire on all fronts. The US and Israel are responsible for the consequences of any violation.”
Israeli warplanes have launched dozens of strikes across southern Lebanon despite a new agreement supposedly brokered by Donald Trump aiming to bolster the tattered ceasefire in Lebanon.
The US president said on Monday that he had stopped an imminent Israeli strike on Beirut and that he had spoken to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and representatives of Hezbollah and both agreed that “all shooting will stop”.
But on Tuesday, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported 30 Israeli strikes across the south. Near the city of Sidon, rescuers recovered the bodies of six members of the same family, including two children and a woman, after an Israeli strike.
The Israeli military also issued a new evacuation warning for the southern city of Nabatiyeh before new strikes, accusing the “Hezbollah terror organisation” of violating the ceasefire.
The Lexie is the sixth ship that the US military has disabled since its blockade of Iran began on 13 April. The US military said it had so far redirected 122 vessels that were seeking to enter or exit Iranian ports.
On the weekend, US forces hit Iranian radar and drone sites, to which Tehran responded by targeting a military base in Kuwait that it claimed was involved in the US operation.
With Reuters
