US attacks Iran and Tehran retaliates across the Middle East, threatening a return to all-out war

The U.S. launched strikes on Iran ear­ly Tues­day, hours af­ter Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump vowed to re­in­state an Amer­i­can block­ade of Iran­ian ports and charge ships for safe pas­sage through the Strait of Hor­muz. Iran re­spond­ed with at­tacks on Mid­dle East al­lies of the U.S.

The lat­est ex­change of fire leaves in tat­ters an in­ter­im deal meant to pause the fight­ing, re­open a wa­ter­way that is key to world en­er­gy sup­plies and give ne­go­tia­tors time to ham­mer out a per­ma­nent end to the war. In­stead, fight­ing has once again en­gulfed the re­gion, threat­ened the glob­al econ­o­my and brought warn­ings to com­mer­cial air­lines. Un­less a diplo­mat­ic so­lu­tion is found quick­ly, it could in­ten­si­fy in­to all-out war.

The fo­cus of the con­flict now is the strait, through which a fifth of all trad­ed crude oil and nat­ur­al gas passed in peace­time. Iran ef­fec­tive­ly shut the pas­sage dur­ing the war by at­tack­ing and threat­en­ing ships — a tac­tic that proved its great­est strate­gic ad­van­tage. It sent the price of oil, fer­tilis­er and oth­er goods soar­ing at a time when world lead­ers were al­ready strug­gling to ad­dress ris­ing costs.

The in­ter­im deal was sup­posed to re­open the wa­ter­way, but Iran has at­tacked ships mov­ing through the strait on a route over­seen by the U.S. mil­i­tary that is out­side Tehran’s con­trol.

The U.S. has now threat­ened to re­open the strait by force — but ex­perts say that will re­quire a much big­ger ar­ma­da if not tens of thou­sands of Amer­i­can ground troops. It’s pos­si­ble Trump will back down, as he has pre­vi­ous­ly.

At­tacks re­sume across the Mideast

The U.S. mil­i­tary’s Cen­tral Com­mand said it struck sev­er­al ar­eas in Iran, tar­get­ing “coastal de­fense sys­tems, mis­sile and drone sites and mar­itime ca­pa­bil­i­ties.” Iran ac­knowl­edged the strikes but pro­vid­ed no im­me­di­ate ca­su­al­ty or dam­age as­sess­ments.

“These strikes will con­tin­ue im­pos­ing a heavy cost on Iran­ian forces and de­grade their abil­i­ty to at­tack in­no­cent civil­ians and com­mer­cial ship­ping in the Strait of Hor­muz,” the U.S. mil­i­tary said.

Iran re­spond­ed with at­tacks tar­get­ing Bahrain, Jor­dan and three tankers that trav­elled through the strait.

Two of the ships were as­so­ci­at­ed with the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates and were set ablaze for a time. The Emi­rati De­fense Min­istry said the at­tack on the tankers Mom­basa and Al Bahiyah killed one mariner and wound­ed eight oth­ers. The Emi­rates threat­ened to re­tal­i­ate.

Dutch ship­ping firm Stolt Tankers said that one of its ships came un­der at­tack. The at­tack on the Stolt Mag­ne­sium off Oman sparked a fire in the en­gine room, but the com­pa­ny said all the mariners were safe.

Iran’s para­mil­i­tary Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard said the Mom­basa and Al Bahiyah “ig­nored re­peat­ed warn­ings.” Iran has tar­get­ed ships that use a route through the strait that pass­es near Oman out­side of its ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters.

Hours af­ter the U.S. said it end­ed its cam­paign of strikes, the Iran­ian city of Bushehr on the Per­sian Gulf was hit in at least four lo­ca­tions, the state-run IR­NA news agency re­port­ed. It again raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Gulf Arab states were at­tack­ing Iran in re­tal­i­a­tion.

Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, sound­ed its mis­sile alert sirens three times ear­ly Tues­day. Jor­dan’s mil­i­tary said it in­ter­cept­ed four mis­siles from Iran. Jor­dan hosts U.S. forces and has come un­der at­tack by Tehran in re­cent days.

The Eu­ro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency warned air­lines against op­er­at­ing in the air­space of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, as well as over the Gulf of Oman.

It said in a bul­letin that “un­pre­dictable mil­i­tary de­vel­op­ments, com­bined with the pos­si­ble use of mis­siles, drones, com­bat air­craft and air-de­fense sys­tems, cre­ate a high risk to civ­il flights.”

In­ter­im deal is in per­il

Ex­changes of fire in re­cent days had al­ready cast doubt on the in­ter­im peace deal — now al­most halfway through the 60-day pe­ri­od in which ne­go­tia­tors were sup­posed to agree to a fi­nal ac­cord, which al­so was meant to ad­dress Iran’s dis­put­ed nu­clear pro­gram and oth­er is­sues.

But Trump’s vow to im­pose a block­ade fur­ther im­per­ils it. Wash­ing­ton lift­ed a block­ade it im­posed in mid-April as part of the deal. The U.S. mil­i­tary said it will re­sume it at mid­night Wednes­day in Dubai.

“We are re­in­stat­ing the THE IRAN­IAN BLOCK­ADE,” Trump said on so­cial me­dia Mon­day.

He said the U.S. would im­pose a fee for pro­tect­ing oth­er ships: 20% of the val­ue of car­go to help cov­er “any and all costs nec­es­sary to do the job of pro­vid­ing safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.”

That’s a change to long­stand­ing U.S. pol­i­cy. The U.S. Navy has fought for free­dom of nav­i­ga­tion on the seas since the Bar­bary Wars in the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry and the War of 1812. It’s al­so a de­par­ture from re­cent U.S. promis­es that the strait would re­main open to all with­out tolls — re­cent­ly of­fered by U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio on a trip to the re­gion.

Un­der the in­ter­im deal, Iran agreed that pas­sage through the strait would re­main free of charge for 60 days — but the agree­ment left open what would hap­pen af­ter. Iran as­serts it has the right to man­age traf­fic through the strait and po­ten­tial­ly charge fees.

The U.S. has dis­put­ed that.

Any at­tempt by the U.S. or Iran to charge fees would vi­o­late glob­al norms on free­dom of nav­i­ga­tion and raise ten­sions, like­ly caus­ing fur­ther eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tion far be­yond the re­gion.

The price of Brent crude oil, the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard, rose to a one-month high of over $87 in trad­ing Tues­day, still well be­low the near­ly $120 reached at the height of the war but threat­en­ing to raise costs every­where.

Me­di­a­tors work­ing to pre­vent a re­turn to full-scale war

Re­gion­al me­di­a­tors are still try­ing to get the Unit­ed States and Iran back to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble, ac­cord­ing to two re­gion­al of­fi­cials.

The of­fi­cials, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the del­i­cate diplo­mat­ic process, said Pak­istan-led me­di­a­tion was work­ing around the clock to re­ac­ti­vate the cease­fire.

Mean­while, Lebanese and Is­raeli del­e­ga­tions were ex­pect­ed to meet in Rome on Tues­day to con­tin­ue U.S.-me­di­at­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions. Short­ly af­ter the U.S. and Is­rael launched the war on Feb. 28, the Lebanese mil­i­tant group Hezbol­lah joined the con­flict in sup­port of its al­ly, Iran, and be­gan at­tack­ing Is­rael. Is­rael re­spond­ed with a ground in­va­sion of Lebanon.

Last month, Lebanon and Is­rael an­nounced a “frame­work agree­ment” out­lin­ing the with­draw­al of Is­raeli forces from south­ern Lebanon in ex­change for the dis­ar­ma­ment of Hezbol­lah. Im­ple­men­ta­tion has stalled.

Be­fore the fight­ing around the strait in­ten­si­fied, Is­rael’s war against Hezbol­lah in Lebanon re­peat­ed­ly threat­ened to de­rail the in­ter­im deal. A truce now ex­ists in Lebanon, but it re­mains un­clear whether it will hold if the U.S. and Iran re­turn to full-scale war. —DUBAI, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (AP)

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Sto­ry by JON GAM­BRELL | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Samy Magdy in Cairo con­tributed to this re­port.