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(Bloomberg) — US President Donald Trump said he will continue bombing Iran if it refuses to agree to an interim peace deal, following a second night of clashes between the countries’ forces.
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Trump ordered multiple strikes as his frustration over the lack of progress in talks grows. He told Fox News the US would attack on Thursday unless the Islamic Republic accepts an accord that’s meant to extend their increasingly tenuous ceasefire by two months and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
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Iran retaliated, like it did the night before, by firing on US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan. Kuwait closed its airspace for a few hours and Jordan said it intercepted 20 missiles. Bahrain reported one child was injured after shrapnel from missile interceptions fell on its capital Manama.
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There were no immediate reports of casualties from either the US or Iranian attacks.
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Tehran also said the Strait of Hormuz would be closed to all types of vessels, suggesting it would tighten its grip on a waterway through which only a small number of oil tankers and other vessels have got through since the start of the conflict in late February. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it hit two vessels trying to sail through the chokepoint early on Thursday. There was no immediate confirmation of such an incident and the US said commercial ships continue to transit through.
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The US and Iran have been in indirect negotiations since they started a ceasefire on April 8. Yet they’ve failed to reach an interim deal — to be followed by more complicated discussions about curbs to Tehran’s nuclear program — and their skirmishes have become more intense in the past week.
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US attacks render the ceasefire “effectively meaningless,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in statement.
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On Sunday night and into Monday, Israel and Iran launched missiles against each other. The US then blamed Iran for downing an Apache helicopter near the Hormuz strait. The latter incident, which Iran hasn’t said it was responsible for, triggered Trump’s order of strikes in the past two days.
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There are several sticking points between the warring sides. Those include Tehran’s insistence the US unfreeze more than $10 billion of Iranian funds held in countries such as Qatar and Trump demanding the Islamic Republic relinquishes or destroys its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium. Iran also wants a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Hezbollah, a key ally of Tehran.
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Overnight, the US targeted Iranian military sites, including air-defense installations, with around 50 Tomahawk missiles. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, described them as “self-defense strikes,” in a signal that Trump wants to avoid restarting a full-on war.
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