DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United States conducted a new round of airstrikes against Iran on Monday after announcing the death of another American service member, hitting around a northwestern city believed to be home to underground missile bases. Iran responded by launching an attack targeting Bahrain, the home of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, and Kuwait.
The latest attacks again showed how, step by step, the U.S. and Iran have inched closer
to all-out war. Last month’s interim deal meant to permanently end the fighting has crumbled and shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has largely stalled. Both sides have targeted civilian infrastructure relied on by millions of people.
The escalation in fighting has pushed oil prices higher in recent weeks. Benchmark Brent crude traded Monday above $86 a barrel and regular gasoline in the U.S. climbed to an average of $4 a gallon, keeping pressure on Americans' wallets ahead of midterm elections this fall.
The U.S. military said the service member was killed in Iraq on Saturday during the “controlled detonation” of a downed Iranian drone.
“We hit them very hard again tonight,” U.S. President Donald Trump said. “And we did that in honor of” the soldiers killed, he said.
The U.S. military’s Central Command announced a new round of strikes early Monday, now into their ninth straight night. Central Command said it targeted “Iranian military command centers, air defense and coastal surveillance sites, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites and communications networks.”
Iran's state-run IRNA news agency reported that the American strikes killed at least one person around Tabriz, a northwestern city about 520 kilometers (325 miles) from the capital, Tehran. Tabriz is believed to host underground missile bases run by Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
U.S. strikes likely also hit Bandar Imam Khomeini in Khuzestan province, Sirik and Jask in Hormozgan province and Konarak and Chahbahar in Sistan and Baluchistan province, IRNA reported.
As the strikes began, a vessel caught fire early Monday in the Strait of Hormuz after being hit by a projectile near the coastline of Oman, the British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said. The crew abandoned the vessel, which was adrift and still ablaze hours later, the UKMTO said.
The route around Oman has been the one the U.S. military has encouraged ships to travel to avoid Iran’s control. The Guard later claimed it was targeting tankers in the strait.
Tehran has retaliated by hitting U.S.-allied countries throughout the Middle East. Bahrain sounded its missile alert sirens Monday morning, while Kuwait said its air defense were firing at an incoming Iranian barrage.
A new pressure point could emerge for world energy markets as Yemen’s Houthi rebels announced on Monday a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia in response for an attack on Sanaa International Airport last week. With the Strait of Hormuz blocked up, Saudi Arabia has been relying on a pipeline to get oil out through the Red Sea.
Trump has threatened to target Iran’s power stations and bridges to try to compel Tehran to loosen its hold on the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of world oil supplies were shipped before the war. Recent attacks suggest the U.S. military is carrying out that plan.
The U.S. in the past week reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to halt its shipments of crude oil. The military on Saturday said it had redirected six ships and disabled one since then.
The halfway point has passed in the 60 days the deal set out to negotiate the permanent end of the war and other issues, including Iran’s nuclear program.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that the U.S. is still open to negotiating with Iran but that “it has to be real.”
“We’re going to continue to respond. If the door opens to diplomacy — if the guys that want to do something productive for Iran win and take control of that system, or take control of the negotiations — that’ll be a very positive development,” Rubio said. “That’s not where we are tonight, unfortunately.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei hours later acknowledged that “proposals conveyed through mediators have been communicated to us,” but he declined to elaborate on their substance.
Mohammad Javad Zarif, a former Iranian foreign minister who helped elect the country's reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, acknowledged in an essay published Monday by Foreign Affairs that the interim "deal could never survive such dissonance” over the Strait of Hormuz.
“As the current conflict makes clear, Washington cannot eliminate the Iranian government,” Zarif wrote. “Only diplomacy, a new peace agreement, and a new security framework produced by regional states and for regional states will allow the United States to turn its attention elsewhere.”
However, Zarif did warn the country's theocracy that “if Iran repeatedly threatens maritime traffic, it could turn much of the world against it.”
Iranian authorities on Sunday said at least 50 people have been killed and 517 wounded in the latest rounds of U.S. strikes. Since the war began on Feb. 28, 17 U.S. service members have been killed.
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Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.
