By Parisa Hafezi, Jana Choukeir and Ahmed Tolba
DUBAI/CAIRO, July 29 (Reuters) - The United States and Saudi Arabia jointly struck Iran-backed groups in Iraq on Wednesday, and President Donald Trump vowed to "beat the fucking shit" out of Iran for firing on U.S. troops just days after he suspended airstrikes.
Iran confirmed late Tuesday that it had fired on U.S. bases in Jordan and at ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and also spurned an Omani proposal to jointly manage the strait.
"We'll be hitting them
hard," Fox News quoted Trump as saying. "We're going to beat the fucking shit out of them."
The activity restarted an on-again, off-again series of attacks that was only halted for a few weeks in June when the U.S. and Iran reached an interim agreement to work towards ending the war. Now, after nearly five months, the conflict has hardened into a stalemate, leaving the region in a state of limbo and keeping energy supplies bottlenecked.
Oil prices shot up Wednesday. Brent crude futures rose more than 7% to push the benchmark past $90 a barrel, reversing much of the plunge earlier this week when Trump unexpectedly halted U.S. strikes over the weekend.
The joint attacks by Washington and Riyadh mark the first time that Saudi Arabia has publicly announced participating in strikes alongside the U.S. That could widen the conflict by drawing Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia into combat against Shi'ite proxies of Iran on a new front.
Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces, powerful Iran-backed paramilitary groups incorporated into the Iraqi security forces, said at least 20 members were killed and 32 wounded in U.S.-Saudi strikes targeting several bases across Iraq.
Iraqi men shouted Shi'ite sectarian slogans and "Death to America!" as they carried the bodies of slain fighters in body bags out of a hospital in Mosul in northern Iraq, footage from Iraq's Al-Ahad television showed.
Washington and Riyadh said they struck Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq in retaliation for drone attacks on Saudi oil targets launched from Iraq.
It was the first major U.S. military action in the Middle East, and, if confirmed, in Iran, since last Friday, when Trump abruptly suspended an intensive bombing campaign after 13 days, having been advised by commanders that the strategy had run its course.
STRIKES COULD WIDEN CONFLICT
Iraq's Shi'ite-led government, one of the few in the world to maintain close military and diplomatic ties with both Tehran and Washington, called an emergency meeting. The prime minister's office urged the parties involved to avoid escalation, adding that it wanted to keep the country out of regional conflicts.
The Iraqi presidency denounced the strikes on the paramilitaries as "an unacceptable attack and a flagrant violation of Iraq's sovereignty", while also calling for a halt to attacks by armed groups against Iraq's neighbours.
Trump told Fox that the United States had coordinated with the Iraqi government in launching the attacks. Baghdad did not specifically address Trump's suggestion it had cooperated, but said only its government has the authority to respond to attacks on its territory.
Iran said the U.S.-Saudi attacks were an attempt by the United States and Israel to spread their war further in the region. One of the Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, said U.S. and Saudi forces would pay a "heavy price".
Washington has long called on the Baghdad government to crack down on Iran-backed paramilitaries, but efforts to do so in the past have provoked domestic unrest.
The deep ties between Iran and Iraq, the two biggest Shi'ite-majority countries, are heightened this week as hundreds of thousands of Iranian religious pilgrims head to shrines in Iraq for an annual day of mourning for martyrs. Some carried portraits of Iran's slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Saudi Arabia has also been drawn into the conflict on another front, with the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen announcing a blockade of Saudi oil exports in the Red Sea last week and firing on ships and oil facilities. The Houthi group is considering imposing fees on commercial ships transiting the sea, sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
Hours before launching the joint attacks with Saudi Arabia on Iraq, the U.S. military said its air defences had averted a surprise Iranian attack on U.S. troops in the region.
Jordan's military said it had shot down five Iranian missiles. U.S. bases in Jordan have lately become primary Iranian targets, where three U.S. service members were killed this month in the worst U.S. losses since March.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they had fired several ballistic missiles at U.S. military installations in Jordan, and had struck three tankers that were attempting to transit through the Strait of Hormuz along an unauthorised route.
TEHRAN REJECTS OMANI PROPOSAL
Fighting had first resumed this month after a U.S.-Iran interim deal reached in June collapsed over the fate of the strait, the world's most important energy shipping route, which Iran says it controls and where it aims to collect fees.
Oman, backed by Gulf states, proposed a plan for joint regional control of the strait this week including voluntary service charges. But a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Wednesday that Iran had rejected the proposal as "unreasonable".
The official said a 50-50 joint control arrangement with Oman would not serve Iran’s interests, though Tehran considers Oman a valuable neighbour. Iran wants sole control over the inbound route and partial control over the outbound route.
The United States has been telling ships to use a route near the Omani shore rather than sailing close to Iran. Iran's Revolutionary Guards Navy said in a statement it continued to maintain full control over the strait and would respond to "unlawful U.S. military interference".
(Reporting by Timour Azhari, Parisa Hafezi, Doina Chiacu, Ahmed Tolba, Kanishka Singh and Reuters bureauxWriting by Peter GraffEditing by Andrei Khalip and David Gaffen)
