US airstrikes hit northern Iran as it disables ship trying to run the blockade

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United States intensified its strikes targeting Iran early Thursday, hitting targets further north as American forces also fired into a ship it accused of trying to break its naval blockade on the Islamic Republic. Tehran retaliated with missile and drone fire targeting Bahrain and Kuwait before dawn.

Days of back-and-forth strikes by the U.S. and Iran across the Middle East — and renewed threats to the Strait of Hormuz — have shredded the interim deal to end the Iran war and the region could tip back into all-out war. Already, Iranian officials say U.S. strikes have killed at more than than 35 people and wounded over 300 others.

When the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran effectively closed the strat to shipping traffic — a move that sent the price of oil, fertilizer and many other goods soaring far beyond the region and gave Iran major leverage in negotiations.

Those rising prices pose a particular challenge to U.S. President Donald Trump and his Republican Party, which hopes to retain control of Congress in elections in November. But Washington has struggled to successfully reopen the waterway, leading to Trump reimposing the naval blockade of Iran on Wednesday.

Iran’s parliament speaker and lead negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said Iran was prepared for a fuller military confrontation if the U.S. does not live up to the terms of the interim deal, and Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard threatened to halt all energy exports from the Middle East over the blockade.

“The export of oil and gas from the region will be either for everyone or for no one,” the Guard said.

Trump again insisted Iran was ready to strike a peace deal, but he did not elaborate.

“They don’t like what we’re doing, and they do want to settle. We’ll find out whether or not we settle with them, or we just finish it off,” he said Wednesday at a defense summit at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania.

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Associated Press writers Michelle Price, Konstantin Toropin, Will Weissert, Collin Binkley and Fatima Hussein in Washington, Christopher Weber in Los Angeles, and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.