The US military reimposed a blockade on Iranian ports over Tehran’s attacks on ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, sparking new strikes on nations hosting American forces as an interim deal to end the war further unraveled.
Days of retaliatory strikes across the Middle East by Iran, and both nations’ attempts to assert control of the waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas trade passes during peacetime, threaten to push the region back to all-out war.
In Iran, more than 260 people were wounded in the latest round of overnight strikes alone, according to the Health Ministry, suggesting an intensification in the bombing.
More than 30 people have been killed over “recent days,” Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said, without elaborating.
The US first imposed the blockade in mid-April and then lifted it in mid-June, a day after signing the interim deal that set a 60-day period for negotiations over issues like Iran’s nuclear program, but talks have stalled as fighting over the strait has intensified.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard threatened Wednesday to halt all energy exports from the Middle East over the blockade.
“The export of oil and gas from the region will be either for everyone or for no one,” it said.
When US President Donald Trump announced the return of the blockade Monday, he also said he would impose a 20% fee on ships passing through the strait. But he dropped the plan to collect fees hours before resuming the blockade, citing requests from allies in the Persian Gulf.
The US carried out another wave of strikes as it reimposed the blockade, striking dozens of targets over seven hours, the US military’s Central Command said Wednesday.
Hossein Kermanpour, a spokesperson for the Health Ministry, gave Wednesday’s casualty figure, without specifying how many people had been killed.
Kermanpour’s figures reported far more people injured than in any other round of recent violence between Iran and the US.
