Iran<\/a> for a fourth day straight and reimposed a naval blockade on the country\u2019s ports in the strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\nUS Central Command (Centcom) said the latest strikes were aimed at \u201cdegrading Iranian capabilities used to attack commercial shipping\u201d in the strait, the key shipping channel for Gulf oil and gas where Tehran has repeatedly carried out attacks on civilian vessels.<\/p>\n
Iranian state media reported explosions near the port city of Bandar Abbas, on the Gulf island of Qeshm near the strait of Hormuz, and other locations.<\/p>\n
In response, Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had targeted what \u2060it described \u2060as command-and-control, logistics, \u200bfuel and military equipment facilities belonging to \u2060the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.<\/p>\n
Both Bahrain and Kuwait came under attack, with Jordan\u2019s army also saying early on Wednesday that its air defences intercepted and shot down three ballistic missiles that entered its airspace.<\/p>\n
Iranian State news agency IRNA said earlier that Iranian forces launched a drone attack on a military base in Jordan that hosts American warplanes.<\/p>\n
The IRGC warned that if Washington sought to block the region\u2019s oil and gas exports by controlling maritime routes, other export routes serving US and allied interests could also be closed, saying regional energy exports would be \u201cfor everyone or \u200bfor \u200bno one\u201d.<\/p>\n
Days of retaliatory strikes across the Middle East by Iran \u2013 and both nations\u2019 attempts to vie for control of the waterway through which a fifth of the world\u2019s oil and natural gas passes during peacetime \u2013 threaten to push the region back to all-out war.<\/p>\n
Trump backtracked from a threat earlier this week that ships would have to pay a 20% fee to the US for \u201csecurity\u201d in the strait, replacing it with what he described as investment and trade deals with Gulf Arab states.<\/p>\n
The US president said he had decided to scrap the toll \u201cbased on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership\u201d, and touted \u201cmassive\u201d investments, just five hours before the toll was due to come into effect. He said the US would continue to blockade Iranian ports.<\/p>\n
Prospects for negotiations aimed at securing a permanent truce after a fragile interim ceasefire was signed on 17 June appear increasingly dim. Iran\u2019s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, said the US decision to renew the blockade \u201chas, in a way, dismantled the Islamabad memorandum\u201d.<\/p>\n
Asked how long the US strikes would carry on, Trump replied: \u201cThey\u2019ll continue until I say it\u2019s enough \u2026 We\u2019re going to knock out all their power plants. We\u2019re going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has threatened to expand US strikes on Iran next week to target power plants and bridges…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":763688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-763687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/763688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}