IN BRIEF
- US stopped a commercial vessel from sailing toward Iranian ports.
- Iran claims it's intercepted US attacks on civilians.
US President Donald Trump has claimed that Iran "will be defeated soon", after the US launched a new wave of strikes against Iran on Wednesday in a return to war between the two foes.
The US and Iran have resumed fighting with strikes on targets across the region, in less than a month after they signed a memorandum of understanding that aimed at ending the war in the Middle East.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they targeted the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, claiming it had intercepted attacks against civilian targets.
Jordan, which has a close defence partner with the US, said they had downed three missiles from the Islamic republic.
Several explosions were also heard late Wednesday near the US consulate in Erbil, the capital of Iraq's northern Kurdistan region.
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Meanwhile, Trump has threatened to widen strikes next week to include power plants and bridges into US targets, unless Iran returns to the negotiating table.
"They will be defeated soon," Trump said.
He also claimed that Iran wanted to settle with the US, but the US would decide if they would want a settlement.
What’s happening with the Strait of Hormuz now?
Iran blockaded Hormuz after the war erupted with US-Israeli strikes on February 28, using the waterway for leverage against its foes for months.
The strait was briefly reopened after the US-Iran deal last month, before Tehran vowed last week it would be closed again "until the US ends its aggression".
Traffic through the waterway remained low, with maritime tracker Kpler reporting only 21 transits on Tuesday.
The US has reimposed its own blockade of Iran's ports. On Thursday, the US Central Command said its military disabled an unladen oil tanker attempting to sail toward an Iranian port.
"The commercial vessel ignored multiple warnings as it attempted to violate the US blockade. A US aircraft disabled the vessel after firing hellfire missiles into the ship's smokestack,” it said.
The ship is no longer transiting to Iran."
Negotiations still continue
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said the renewed US blockade "has, in a way, dismantled the Islamabad memorandum", referring to the interim deal reached last month.
Despite renewed hostilities, mediated talks between the two sides have not formally ended.
But Iran's top negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf told state television on Wednesday that "a memorandum of understanding only has meaning when its clauses are valid and being implemented. If Iran is not to derive any benefit from the memorandum of understanding, we have no reason to adhere".
Since last week, renewed US attacks have killed at least 30 people in Iran, government spokesman Fatemeh Mohajerani said.
Separately, the military announced that seven of its personnel were killed in Wednesday's strikes on the southeast.
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