Hawkins said the strikes targeted an area near Bandar Abbas, a southern port city and home of an Iranian naval base that sits on the Strait of Hormuz, according to the New York Times.<\/p>\n
Iranian state media had earlier reported that local officials in Bandar Abbas were investigating after explosions were heard.<\/p>\n
Iran is yet to respond to the latest US strikes. It is unclear what impact they will have on any potential peace agreement between the US and Iran.<\/p>\n
At the weekend, President Donald Trump had suggested the sides were close to a deal, but later said he had instructed negotiators “not to rush into” one.<\/p>\n
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said an agreement could possibly be reached on Monday. <\/p>\n
But Baqai responded: “It is correct to say that we have reached a conclusion on a large portion of the issues under discussion… But to say that this means the signing of an agreement is imminent – no-one can make such a claim.”<\/p>\n
Despite the downplaying of any breakthrough from senior officials, Iran’s top negotiator and foreign minister were in Doha for talks with Qatar’s prime minister on a potential deal with the US, Reuters reported.<\/p>\n
US and Iranian forces have observed a ceasefire since 8 April. Iran has maintained controls on Gulf shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and the US Navy has sought to blockade Iran’s ports.<\/p>\n
The US and Israel launched wide-ranging strikes on Iran on 28 February, sparking conflict across the Middle East. Iran responded by attacking Israel and US-allied states in the Gulf, and effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz. The move sent oil prices soaring globally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hawkins said the strikes targeted an area near Bandar Abbas, a southern port city and home of an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-603892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}