Cease-Fire Unraveling As U.S. And Iran Trade Strikes Again
U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf reported new attacks by Iran on Monday morning as Tehran announced another round of retaliatory strikes against American military sites, extending a pattern of hostilities by the two sides as their cease-fire continued to unravel.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said it was targeting U.S. military assets in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman. Authorities in Jordan and Kuwait said they were intercepting incoming fire, and air raid sirens sounded in Bahrain, hours after U.S. forces said they had struck dozens of military targets in Iran. It was the second volley of American attacks in the past day that were intended to stymie Iran’s ability to attack commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
A week of back-and-forth strikes has left the U.S.-Iran truce in tatters as the two sides tussle over control of the Strait of Hormuz. Capt. Tim Hawkins, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said that Iranian forces’ attacks on commercial shipping in the strait demonstrated the need for the American offensive.
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An Iranian attack on a Cypriot-flagged container ship on Saturday set off the exchange of hostilities, which spilled into Monday morning. Iran over the weekend also said it was closing the strait, through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply passed before the war.
U.S. Central Command said that it had carried out 140 strikes on Saturday night, among the biggest salvos of the last week. A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations said that the number of strikes on Sunday was somewhat fewer.
The Trump administration has said that the truce struck last month would fully lift Tehran’s blockade of the strait and allow for the free movement of commercial vessels. But Iran has insisted that all ships transiting the waterway travel through its territorial waters, as it seeks to use the strait as leverage in peace talks.
President Trump insisted in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the strait was open to shipping traffic, adding that the U.S. military had “bombed the hell” out of Iran the night before.
