DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United States intensified its strikes against Iran early Thursday, hitting targets farther north as American forces also fired on a vessel the U.S. accused of trying to break its naval blockade of the Islamic Republic. Iran responded with rocket and drone strikes aimed at U.S. allies in the region before dawn and warned that its attacks may escalate.
Days of reciprocal strikes between the U.S. and Iran across the Middle East — and renewed threats to the Strait of Hormuz — have torn apart the interim agreement to end the Iran conflict and could push the region back into full‑scale war. Iranian officials say U.S. strikes have killed more than 35 people and wounded over 300 others.
Strikes also reached areas around Iran’s capital, Tehran, for the first time in this latest round of violence, indicating a broadening of American targets.
When the U.S. and Israel launched the conflict on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic, a move that sent oil, fertilizer and many other commodity prices soaring far beyond the region and gave Iran considerable leverage in negotiations.
Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesperson for the Iranian military’s Khatam al‑Biya Central Headquarters, threatened that Iran could launch wide‑scale attacks on regional infrastructure if the U.S. acts on President Donald Trump’s repeated warnings that America could strike Iranian bridges and power plants.
“All the infrastructure in the region will be crushed under the steel blows of the mighty armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran” should Trump’s menace be carried out, Zolfaghari said.
“Under no circumstances and in no way will we let America, as a foreign and extraregional country, to interfere in the Strait of Hormuz,” he added. “This is Iran’s invincible red line.”
The U.S. strikes early Thursday hit near Tehran, state media reported. They also targeted Semnan province, home to Iran’s ballistic missile production and space program.
Iranian media reported strikes Thursday morning in the provinces of Hamedan, Hormozgan, Khuzestan, Lorestan, Markazi and Sistan and Baluchistan.
On Wednesday, the U.S. resumed daytime strikes on Iran, further showing the expanding tempo of the attacks. An assault on Greater Tunb Island, a strategic point in the Strait of Hormuz, targeted Iranian defense and missile sites, Central Command said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said it opened fire on the Curaçao‑flagged oil tanker Belma sailing toward Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal in the Persian Gulf. After the vessel “ignored multiple warnings,” a U.S. aircraft disabled the merchant ship by firing a rocket into its smokestack.
Another American strike Wednesday hit a barracks for Iran’s 388th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, which operates tanks and armored vehicles, in Sistan and Baluchestan province, Iranian state television reported. The report said Americans fired at least 13 missiles in the attack and the seven dead included conscripts and career soldiers. A number of troops were wounded.
Iran retaliated Thursday morning with rocket and drone attacks on Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait, officials in those countries that host U.S. forces said. There was no immediate confirmation of damage or casualties from the attacks. Kuwait reported a fresh round of incoming fire on Thursday afternoon.
Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al‑Zaidi condemned an overnight drone strike on the city of Irbil in Iraq’s semiautonomous northern Kurdish region. The drone, which authorities said had been intercepted, came during his trip to the United States in which he said Iraq would work to disarm non‑state armed groups, including those backed by Iran.
A drone separately targeted a tanker in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Basra in southern Iraq on Thursday afternoon, the state‑run INA news bureau reported. A port worker who witnessed the strike said there appeared to be only minor damage to the tanker. No casualties were reported.
Trump says a deal is still possible.
The latest round of fighting is centered on the Strait of Hormuz, as Iran attacks ships using a U.S‑controlled route through the vital waterway.
The U.S. has threatened to reopen the strait by force, but experts say that would require a much larger armada, if not tens of thousands of ground troops.
The price for Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, traded above $85 a barrel on Thursday, more than 15% higher than the price before the war, but still well below the roughly $120 reached at the height of the conflict.
Rising prices pose a particular dilemma for Trump and his Republican Party, which hopes to retain control of Congress in the November elections. Yet Washington has struggled to successfully reopen the waterway, leading Trump to reimpose the naval blockade Wednesday.
Trump again insisted Iran was ready to strike a deal, but he did not elaborate.
“They don’t like what we’re doing, and they do want to settle. We’ll find out whether or not we settle with them, or we just finish it off,” he said Wednesday at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania.
Mediators have sought to calm the tensions, but so far have been unsuccessful. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday said it was still trying to bring the U.S. and Tehran to the table, acknowledging that mediation is becoming increasingly difficult.
“Whenever the parties exhaust the logic of escalation, the look for de‑escalation is there,” ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi told a news conference.
Trump separately said on social media that Tehran made a goodwill gesture by releasing an American detainee wrongly held in Iran since 2024. He did not provide further details. Human rights lawyer Jared Genser released a statement identifying the detainee as his client Dena Karari, a U.S‑Iranian citizen who runs a nonprofit and was charged with espionage.
Iran did not immediately acknowledge the release, and her case was not publicly known, as is sometimes the situation with detentions in the Islamic Republic.
*Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.*
Sincity Press Staff
4 hours ago 6 min read
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