Trump threatens more strikes on Iran after Tehran fires back at countries in the region

The Unit­ed States launched airstrikes Wednes­day against Iran, and Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said more were com­ing, as Tehran fired back at coun­tries in the re­gion. The es­ca­lat­ing at­tacks threat­ened to de­rail ef­forts to end the war, with Trump warn­ing that Tehran would “pay the price” for stalled ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Trump’s warn­ings at the White House and on so­cial me­dia came hours af­ter Bahrain, Kuwait and Jor­dan — all of which host U.S. troops — came un­der Iran­ian fire. It was the sec­ond time this week that back-and-forth strikes have test­ed a two-month cease­fire. On Mon­day, Iran and Is­rael tar­get­ed each oth­er.

“We’re go­ing to hit them again hard to­day,” Trump told re­porters at the White House hours af­ter the U.S. said it struck Iran­ian mil­i­tary sites.

Short­ly af­ter Trump spoke, the U.S. mil­i­tary said it had fired on an oil tanker at­tempt­ing to trans­port oil from Iran in vi­o­la­tion of its block­ade on Iran­ian ports.

Trump wouldn’t say whether he planned to fol­low through on threats he made ear­li­er in the war to at­tack bridges and util­i­ty plants in Iran. He urged Iran to sign a deal to end the war.

“We were re­al­ly close to a deal but they keep tap­ping us along,” Trump said.

Trump’s com­ments un­der­lined the Amer­i­can leader’s whip­saw ap­proach to the war. He sug­gest­ed on Mon­day that a deal to end the con­flict could be reached in a mat­ter of days.

Iran, mean­while, has proved re­silient de­spite hav­ing faced weeks of heavy bomb­ing. It is bet­ting that its abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly close the Strait of Hor­muz — a cru­cial pas­sage­way for the world’s oil and nat­ur­al gas — gives it a strong bar­gain­ing chip.

Still, both coun­tries seem to be look­ing for a way to end the con­flict — if they can man­age to sell it as a win at home. But Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu ap­pears in­tent on pur­su­ing much more dif­fi­cult goals: the col­lapse of Iran’s theo­crat­ic gov­ern­ment, the elim­i­na­tion of its nu­clear pro­gram, and the de­struc­tion of the Iran­ian-al­lied Hezbol­lah mil­i­tant group in Lebanon. That will make com­pro­mise much hard­er.

Strikes by the US and Iran shake the Mideast

Since the U.S. and Is­rael start­ed the war with at­tacks on Iran on Feb. 28, the con­flict has shak­en the glob­al econ­o­my, dri­ven up en­er­gy prices around the world, and made food and oth­er ba­sics more ex­pen­sive. The in­ter­na­tion­al bench­mark for crude oil trad­ed above $92 a bar­rel on Wednes­day, up more than 25% since the start of the war.

The U.S. mil­i­tary said Wednes­day an Amer­i­can air­craft fired “pre­ci­sion mu­ni­tions” in­to the en­gine room of the Palau-flagged ves­sel M/T Set­te­bel­lo as it at­tempt­ed to breach the naval block­ade with a ship­ment of Iran­ian oil. It was the eighth mer­chant ves­sel dis­abled by U.S. forces in wa­ters off Iran.

In­dia’s for­eign min­istry said that three In­di­an crew mem­bers aboard the Set­te­bel­lo were miss­ing af­ter the ship was struck, while 21 oth­er In­di­an sailors were res­cued. Its state­ment did not men­tion the U.S. mil­i­tary or the block­ade.

In strikes ear­li­er Wednes­day, the U.S. mil­i­tary said its fight­er jets tar­get­ed “air de­fense, ground con­trol sta­tions, and sur­veil­lance radar sites.

Iran said U.S. strikes hit two wa­ter reser­voirs in its south­ern city of Sirik, tem­porar­i­ly cut­ting off wa­ter to thou­sands of peo­ple. Iran’s state me­dia pub­lished video of what it said was a dam­aged reser­voir, though The As­so­ci­at­ed Press could not im­me­di­ate­ly ver­i­fy the footage.

U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand had no im­me­di­ate com­ment.

Tehran lat­er claimed at­tacks in Kuwait, Bahrain and Jor­dan.

Jor­dan said it shot down five in­com­ing mis­siles, which Iran said tar­get­ed an air base host­ing Amer­i­can mil­i­tary air­craft. Jor­dan’s state-run Pe­tra news agency re­port­ed there were no in­juries.

Bahrain and Kuwait said they in­ter­cept­ed in­com­ing fire, with­out elab­o­rat­ing.

Iran­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Ab­bas Araghchi con­demned the Amer­i­can at­tacks as a vi­o­la­tion of Iran­ian sov­er­eign­ty. For­eign Min­istry spokesper­son Es­mail Baghaei said in tele­vised com­ments that, fol­low­ing the new at­tacks, Iran would re­view its stance on ne­go­ti­a­tions to end the war.

Ef­forts to me­di­ate a deal con­tin­ued. Fol­low­ing con­sul­ta­tions with the U.S., a del­e­ga­tion from Qatar ar­rived in Tehran for talks on Wednes­day, ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial with knowl­edge of the vis­it who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty due to the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the talks.

The ex­changes of fire came a day af­ter a U.S. Army at­tack he­li­copter crashed near the Strait of Hor­muz. The he­li­copter col­lid­ed with an Iran­ian drone, ac­cord­ing to a U.S. of­fi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion. It wasn’t clear whether the col­li­sion was in­ten­tion­al.

A drone boat res­cued both of the he­li­copter’s crew, and Trump said they were un­in­jured.

Big dis­agree­ments stand in the way of a quick peace deal

Wary of high gas prices in the run-up to con­gres­sion­al elec­tions in No­vem­ber, Trump seems to be look­ing for a quick win. But he is al­so mak­ing de­mands that will be tough for Iran to swal­low.

The U.S. wants to see Iran give up its stock­pile of high­ly en­riched ura­ni­um. While Iran in­sists its nu­clear pro­gram is peace­ful, that ura­ni­um is a short, tech­ni­cal step from weapons-grade lev­els.

Iran is re­fus­ing to give up the ura­ni­um and de­mand­ing re­lief from sanc­tions. It al­so wants the re­lease of frozen as­sets even be­fore a fi­nal agree­ment is in place, some­thing Trump re­ject­ed.

It’s not clear how those dif­fer­ences can be bridged — and Trump has re­peat­ed­ly threat­ened to walk away from the talks. His Truth So­cial post Wednes­day ac­cused Iran of tak­ing “too long to ne­go­ti­ate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!”

Mean­while, Iran has con­tin­ued to in­sist that any deal to end the war must al­so end fight­ing be­tween its al­ly Hezbol­lah and Is­rael. In­stead, Is­rael has in­ten­si­fied its mil­i­tary cam­paign against the Lebanon-based mil­i­tant group.

An airstrike on a vil­lage east of Tyre killed at least six peo­ple, Lebanon’s state-run Na­tion­al News Agency re­port­ed. It said two oth­ers were killed by an Is­raeli drone strike on a car in the south­ern city of Sidon. —DUBAI, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (AP)

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Sto­ry by JON GAM­BRELL and MICHELLE L. PRICE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Michelle Price re­port­ed from Wash­ing­ton. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Kon­stan­tin Toropin and Will Weis­sert in Wash­ing­ton; Na­tal­ie Melz­er in Na­hariya, Is­rael; David Ris­ing in Bangkok; Bassem Mroue in Beirut; Michelle L. Price in New York and Russ Bynum in Sa­van­nah, Geor­gia, con­tributed to this re­port.