American military resources are stretched and political pressure in Washington is mounting, while Iran\u2019s economy has been battered by sanctions and an American naval blockade. Iran\u2019s currency hit another record low on Wednesday, with traders in Tehran exchanging 2.20 million rials for one US dollar, a 10 percent hike from last week\u2019s record.<\/p>\n
Neither side can continue indefinitely between full-scale war and a truce, said Hamidreza Azizi, senior Iran analyst at the Crisis Group, an international think tank.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt some point, one of the sides may see a need to escalate in order to break this cycle,\u201d he cautioned. \u201cSo that could bring the two sides to a point that they have been trying to avoid until now, which is a full-scale war.\u201d<\/p>\n
The latest flare-up in violence came as the standoff seemed to be shifting slightly more in the US favor, with the price of oil hitting around $80 a barrel last month and Iranian leaders talking about growing economic hardships, said Sascha Bruchmann, an analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies\u2019 Middle East office in Bahrain.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe U.S. is trying to reinstall some kind of confidence into the global oil markets \u2026 and the Iranians had to respond to that by reinserting insecurity and doubt,\u201d Bruchmann said.<\/p>\n
Since the fighting resumed over the weekend, the price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, has climbed to around $95, up more than 30 percent from the start of the war.<\/p>\n
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Iran will \u201ccontinue to feel the squeeze\u201d from the United States until it drops any nuclear weapons ambitions and ends support for armed groups in the Middle East. Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is peaceful.<\/p>\n
Following the strikes on Jordan, US Gulf allies Kuwait and Bahrain said they had also come under attack, without reporting any casualties.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou will soon see that Iran\u2019s new strategy on the battlefield, in diplomacy, and in confronting the economic blockade will shatter your foundations,\u201d the recently appointed head of Iran\u2019s powerful Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, said on X.<\/p>\n
In Iraq, where Iranian-backed forces are active, Kurdish authorities said they had intercepted 10 drones laden with explosives in the Irbil area. Iranian television reported that American bases in Irbil had been targeted.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s military also said that Iran-backed Hezbollah fired two explosive drones at its soldiers in southern Lebanon, without causing casualties.<\/p>\n
The US Central Command said Tuesday\u2019s strikes focused on Iranian military targets, including air defense sites, radar systems, and maritime assets.<\/p>\n
One US strike hit a home hosting a wedding in Kuhestak, a small coastal town overlooking the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iranian state media.<\/p>\n
Four people were killed \u2014 two women and two children, aged 4 and 16 \u2014 and at least 68 were wounded, the state news agency IRNA and state TV said Wednesday. Just after the strike, Ahmad Nafisi, the province\u2019s deputy governor, told Iranian state television that five people were killed. There was no explanation for the change.<\/p>\n
Several heavy explosions shook Kuhestak, with fireballs that lit up the night sky, according to security camera footage carried by the semiofficial Fars news agency.<\/p>\n
Images from Iran\u2019s semiofficial Tasnim news agency showed several hospitalized children being treated for injuries at a hospital in the nearby town of Minab, where a US missile strike on the opening day of the war hit a primary school, killing more than 100 children.<\/p>\n
Footage from the Iranian Red Crescent showed rescue workers entering a damaged home in the wake of the strike. It showed a hole in the roof of one house in a neighborhood of densely packed homes.<\/p>\n
A weapons expert said that images of fragments of ordnance that Iranian media said were used in a strike indicated it was an \u201cAmerican air-delivered guided weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n
N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services, initially identified the weapon as a SLAM-ER cruise missile, an air-launched missile that can be retargeted in flight by a human operator. But after examining further imagery, he said it was more likely to be a JSOW, a type of guided bomb, though he did not rule out a SLAM-ER and said multiple weapons may have hit the site.<\/p>\n
US Central Command declined to comment on the analyst\u2019s findings. Spokesperson Captain Tim Hawkins said earlier that the US military was \u201caware of the reports, which originated from Iranian state media, and we are looking into them.\u201d He would not say if CENTCOM had launched a formal investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cMake no mistake: These crimes will not go unpunished,\u201d Ebrahim Azizi, chairperson of the Iranian parliament\u2019s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said on X.<\/p>\n
Separately, Iran has said four members of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and 10 members of the Guard\u2019s volunteer Basij forces died in the US attacks. A total of 108 people were injured in the latest round of attacks, state broadcaster the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting quoted the country\u2019s health minister as saying.<\/p>\n
During last month\u2019s lull in fighting, the US ramped up economic pressure on Iran as Washington sought to fully open the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
About a fifth of the world\u2019s traded oil was shipped through the key waterway before Israel and the United States attacked Iran on Feb. 28 and Iran largely shut it down in response. Despite many pronouncements from Washington that the strait is open, only a handful of ships are making the passage each day and Iran has regularly attacked vessels.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Saudi shipping company Bahri said two Filipino sailors were killed in an attack late Monday as their vessel transited the strait.<\/p>\n
A ceasefire deal reached in June quickly fell apart amid exchanges of strikes that same month. Mediator Pakistan has been working to restart talks.<\/p>\n
Late Tuesday, Trump said he would not force Iran to the bargaining table.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t care less if they sign a worthless, to them, agreement. I like our position now much better, with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing. They are just playing out the inevitable. When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?\u201d Trump wrote on social media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"American military resources are stretched and political pressure in Washington is mounting, while Iran\u2019s economy has been battered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[328,2087,2446,147,777,3368,197,1829,34,196,598,9918,768,1401,2222,463,200,771,82],"class_list":["post-275714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-business","tag-drone-warfare","tag-economic-indicators","tag-economy","tag-energy-industry","tag-fires","tag-general-news","tag-international-agreements","tag-iran","tag-iran-war","tag-islam","tag-midterm-elections","tag-military-and-defense","tag-military-technology","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-religion","tag-war-and-unrest","tag-washington-news","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117203935146029490","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275714","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=275714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}