Air raid sirens sounded in Bahrain and Kuwait after Iran announced its retaliatory operation, while the US said its latest military action followed attacks on three ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, including Qatari and Saudi oil tankers.
The escalation came as the US Treasury Department revoked a sanctions waiver that had allowed Iran to continue limited oil exports under the interim peace agreement reached with Tehran on June 17.
According to Washington, Iran had failed to comply with the terms of the MoU governing negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz and maritime security, prompting the reimposition of sanctions from July 17.
Reporting from Washington, officials said the United States had responded on both military and economic fronts after concluding that Iran breached its obligations under the agreement.
The US military also struck targets linked to Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, where Washington has continued escorting vessels along the southern shipping route while accusing Tehran of restricting access to ships using alternative channels.
US officials maintained that commercial vessels could no longer safely navigate the central shipping lane because it remains heavily mined.
“The whole issue here is still the interpretation of the MoU which each side says the other has broken,” a correspondent reporting from Washington said.
Meanwhile, the coffin of Iran’s slain Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, arrived in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf, where hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered for another stage of the funeral procession.
The procession is expected to travel about six kilometres through Najaf before continuing to Karbala, another major Shi’ite holy city, ahead of the return of Khamenei’s body to Iran for burial later in the day.
Despite the large turnout, Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was not expected to attend because of his age and the extreme heat, with temperatures reaching about 45 degrees Celsius.
The latest US strikes also drew criticism from prominent figures associated with President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
Former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene questioned why Washington was launching fresh attacks despite previously claiming victory over Iran’s military capabilities.
Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, argued that the latest strikes effectively ended the memorandum of understanding with Tehran and warned that Washington was returning to a conflict it had previously sought to avoid.
He said the agreement had been signed because there was “no military solution” to securing the Strait of Hormuz and urged the United States to abandon further military escalation.
