US attacks Iran over ship being hit in Strait of Hormuz; Tehran lashes out again at Gulf Arab states 

[AP Photo]

The United States attacked Iran early yesterday morning over an Iranian strike on a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz that set the container ship ablaze and forced its crew to abandon it. Iran responded with attacks targeting several countries in the Gulf, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman.

The outburst of fighting raised new questions about efforts to reach a permanent end to a war that began on Feb. 28. The strait, a key transit route for oil and natural gas, has become the key sticking point in negotiations, and repeated fighting over the past week has left negotiations in danger of collapse.

The U.S. military’s Central Command said it hit some 140 targets in Sunday’s strikes, far more than in the two previous rounds of attacks, and went after missile and drone launch sites, ammunition dumps, communication equipment and other sites. It said the attacks would weaken Iran’s ability to threaten civilian shipping.

“Iran made a poor choice. Now they pay,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote online.

The U.S. has launched three rounds of airstrikes targeting Iran in the last week over Iranian attacks on ships heading through the strait using a route seeking to avoid the Islamic Republic’s territorial waters. Iran retaliated by attacking nations in the region hosting U.S. military forces, while insisting it alone must control the strait and potentially charge vessels for traveling through it.

“The era of one-sided deals is OVER,” Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and a main negotiator, wrote Sunday. “We told you: keep your word or pay the price. Reality is knocking.”

About a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas passed through the strait before the war began. Iran’s grip on it during the war led to a global energy crisis, though oil prices have sharply dropped since wartime highs of $120 a barrel.

Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman get attacked

Missile alerts sounded across several Gulf Arab nations early Sunday morning.

Qatar’s military said it intercepted incoming Iranian fire, with explosions heard in the neighboring United Arab Emirates. Three people, including a child, were wounded as a result of falling shrapnel from the interception of Iranian attacks, Qatar’s Interior Ministry said, giving no further details on their conditions.

Meanwhile, missile alerts sounded for the third time on Sunday in Bahrain, an island kingdom in the Persian Gulf home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. Kuwait’s military also said it was intercepting incoming fire.

The Omani state news agency said drones struck sites in northeastern Oman, in the area that sits on the Strait of Hormuz. Iran had previously claimed attacks on Oman. The attack came after the two countries held talks on Saturday.

Sirens also sounded in the United Arab Emirates, but the government said missiles did not cross into UAE borders. The UAE so far hasn’t been targeted in the most recent round of Iranian attacks. The last attack on the Emirates, home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, came in May when a drone sparked a fire on the edge of the country’s sole nuclear power plant.

Iran also made a series of claims about attacks elsewhere that were not immediately confirmed.

In the Strait of Hormuz attack, a Cyprus-flagged container ship was hit by Iran and suffered “significant engineroom damage” and a civilian crew member was missing, U.S. Central Command said early Sunday morning. All of the crew, including the missing member, were Indian nationals, according to India’s Ministry of External Affairs.

India condemned the attack and said it was working with Oman on a search-and-rescue operation. It called for “free and unimpeded” navigation through the strait.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center, overseen by the British military, said the ship had been traveling on a route hugging the shoreline of Oman. That’s been the way ships have entered and exited the Persian Gulf while avoiding Iranian territorial waters.

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said multiple vessels “disregarded our warnings and instructions to correct their course and proceed along the approved route.” One of them “was struck by a warning shot and brought to a stop.”

Iran said that the strait would remain closed “until further notice” and said it would consider targeting “additional enemy bases in the region” if it faced more attacks.

Iranian state media reported U.S. strikes across swathes of the entire country, including southern Iran in the province closest to the Strait of Hormuz, and military sites in a province near Tehran.

Attacks followed more diplomatic talks about the strait

The latest violence followed Iran and Oman’s foreign ministers meeting on Saturday to discuss the strait. The narrow strait sits in both Iran and Oman’s territorial waters, but has long been considered an international waterway.

Oman said it and Iran agreed to continue discussing the Strait of Hormuz “at the technical and political levels.” However, Iran offered no statement about the strait being open to all — something sought by the Trump administration.

U.S. President Donald Trump suggested last week that an interim deal in the Iran war was “over.” But mediators, including Pakistan, Qatar and Egypt, have continued efforts to reach an agreement.

Iran’s new supreme leader, still unseen since the war began, also vowed in his first statement since the funeral of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that Iranians would avenge his killing in the war’s opening strikes on Feb. 28.

Such revenge “is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out,” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement carried on state television. JON GAMBRELL & WILL WEISSERT, DUBAI, MDT/AP