Trump to give primetime speech on 2020 election: Sources<\/a><\/p>\nWhen the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic, a move that sent the price of oil soaring and gave Iran major leverage in negotiations.<\/p>\n
Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesperson for the Iranian military’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, threatened that Iran could launch widespread attacks on “all the infrastructure in the region” if the U.S. acts on President Donald Trump ‘s repeated warnings that America could hit Iranian bridges and power plants.<\/p>\n
“Under no circumstances and in no way will we allow America, as a foreign and extraregional country, to interfere in the Strait of Hormuz,” he added. “This is Iran’s invincible red line.”<\/p>\n
Both the US and Iran launch attacks as blockade is reimposed<\/p>\n
Iranian state media said the U.S. strikes Thursday hit around Tehran and Semnan province, home to Iran’s ballistic missile production and space program. State media also reported strikes around the provinces of Hamedan, Hormozgan, Khuzestan, Lorestan, Markazi, and Sistan and Baluchestan, as well as on Iran’s Qeshm island, near the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
Seven people were wounded in a U.S. strike that hit the Allah-Akbar Hill residential neighborhood in the port city of Bandar Abbas, according to Iranian state media.<\/p>\n
An attack on Greater Tunb Island targeted Iranian defense and missile sites, U.S. Central Command said.<\/p>\n
Greater Tunb Island is one of three small rocky islands that sit at the confluence of the Persian Gulf and the strait. The islands – seized in 1971 by Iran from what would become the United Arab Emirates – help the Islamic Republic exert significant control over the strait.<\/p>\n
The U.S. military also said it disabled a Curacao-flagged oil tanker as it sailed toward Iran’s main oil export terminal, firing a missile after the ship “ignored multiple warnings.”<\/p>\n
Another American strike Wednesday targeted a barracks for Iran’s 388th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, which operates tanks and armored vehicles, in Sistan and Baluchestan province, Iranian state television reported. The report said seven were killed in the attack, including conscripts and career soldiers.<\/p>\n
Iran retaliated Thursday with missile and drone attacks on Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait, authorities in those countries home to U.S. forces said. There was no immediate acknowledgment of damage or casualties from the attacks.<\/p>\n
Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi condemned an overnight drone attack in Iraq’s semiautonomous northern Kurdish region. The drone, which authorities said had been intercepted, came during his trip to the U.S. in which he said Iraq would work to disarm non-state armed groups, including those backed by Iran.<\/p>\n
A drone separately targeted a tanker Thursday in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Basra in southern Iraq, the state-run INA news agency reported. No casualties were reported.<\/p>\n
Trump says a peace deal is still possible<\/p>\n
The latest round of fighting is focused on the Strait of Hormuz, as Iran attacks ships using a U.S.-controlled route through the vital waterway.<\/p>\n
Week-to-week cargo shipments through the strait dropped by almost a quarter at the beginning of the month, according to Maritime data firm Lloyd’s List Intelligence. And that was before the recent surge in tit-for-tat attacks.<\/p>\n
Given the risks, some oil shippers are transiting the strait with their location devices turned off, but many are just staying put, Lloyd’s said Thursday. A growing amount of the region’s energy is being shipped through pipelines, but not nearly enough to offset the decline in shipping through the strait.<\/p>\n
The U.S. has threatened to reopen the strait by force, but experts say that would require a much bigger armada if not tens of thousands of ground troops.<\/p>\n
The price for Brent crude oil, the international standard, traded above $85 a barrel on Thursday, more than 15% higher than the price before the war, but still well below the nearly $120 reached at the height of the conflict.<\/p>\n
Rising prices pose a particular challenge to Trump and his Republican Party, which hopes to retain control of Congress in elections in November.<\/p>\n
The U.S. reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“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,” Trump said Wednesday at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday said efforts were still underway to bring the U.S. and Tehran to the negotiating table but acknowledged that was becoming increasingly difficult.<\/p>\n
Trump said on social media that Tehran made a goodwill gesture by releasing an American citizen wrongly detained in Iran since 2024. He did not release further details. Human rights lawyer Jared Genser released a statement identifying the detainee as his client Dena Karari, a U.S.-Iranian citizen who runs a nonprofit and was charged with espionage.<\/p>\n
Iran did not immediately acknowledge the release, and her case was not publicly known, as sometimes happens with detentions in the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n
Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut, Mae Anderson in New York and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United States intensified its strikes against Iran on Thursday, hitting targets farther…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[61264,177,34,1893,42,392,5864,61263,36],"class_list":["post-221913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-61264","tag-conflict","tag-iran","tag-latest","tag-news","tag-trump","tag-update","tag-us-bombs-iran-today","tag-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116978850610897138","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}