Gulf hostilities flared again on Wednesday as Iranian attacks on Kuwait damaged its airport and injured dozens while the US military carried out strikes near the Strait of Hormuz, with diplomacy to halt the war showing little sign of progress.
The attacks are the latest to test a tenuous ceasefire, sending oil prices up more than 2 per cent. The strait has remained largely closed for more than three months after the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran.
An Iranian drone and missile attack on Kuwait International Airport killed an Indian national and injuring more than 60 other people, Kuwaiti authorities and state media said.
Earlier, Iranian media reported that Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards had attacked the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain and a US airbase, as well as a vessel identified as Panaya. US Central Command (Centcom) denied its bases had been hit and said Iranian ballistic missiles failed to strike their targets in the region.
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Centcom said it had carried out a new round of “defensive strikes” in southern Iran, targeted missile launch sites and Iranian boats seeking to lay mines, and conducted strikes on Qeshm Island near the Strait of Hormuz after attempted Iranian attacks.
Since the US and Israel began strikes on Iran on February 28th, Tehran has repeatedly attacked targets in the Gulf region home to US military bases, hitting civilian and military targets.
Hostilities have occasionally flared despite a ceasefire agreed in early April, as the US has pushed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a route that handled roughly a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments before the war. Last week, Iran and the US signalled progress towards a tentative initial agreement to halt the war and reopen the strait, but the two sides have yet to sign off on the deal.
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Late on Wednesday, the US House of Representatives backed a Democratic-led resolution aiming to stop the Iran war until hostilities are authorised by Congress, reflecting growing congressional concern, even among US president Donald Trump’s Republicans, over the conflict.
The House voted 215 to 208, as four Republicans voted with Democrats in favour of the war powers resolution. It was the latest setback for Trump in Congress despite his party’s slim majorities in both chambers. The vote is largely symbolic.
Any resolution would also have to pass the US Senate to become effective, and garner the two-thirds majorities in both chambers to overcome an almost certain Trump veto.
However, it comes after three previous war powers resolutions had failed in the House by increasingly slim margins. The Senate advanced a separate, but similar resolution last month in a procedural vote, after seven previous attempts had failed.
Also on Wednesday night, Trump suggested that there could be progress in negotiations with Iran as soon as this weekend.
“It might not happen,” Trump told reporters at the White House, before adding, “it could happen over the weekend”.
Trump also said “we will get” Tehran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which has been a major sticking point in negotiations.
Tehran has conditioned a deal on an end to fighting in Lebanon. It also wants access to billions of dollars in oil revenues, waivers on sanctions on crude exports, a lifting of a US blockade on its ports and continued leverage over the strait.
Trump, who is under pressure to bring down US fuel prices while not making concessions to Iran, has said his top priority is to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran says its atomic programme is for peaceful purposes.
Trump has said negotiations are continuing, though Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said on Wednesday that Iran had not responded to the US in recent days and that exchanges of texts through intermediaries were suspended until Iran’s conditions on Lebanon are met.
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In a podcast interview released on Wednesday, Trump said Iran had agreed to not have a nuclear weapon and that Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei was involved in negotiations.
The war has killed thousands, mainly in Iran and Lebanon. It also sparked the latest round of conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hizbullah, with Israel pursuing its deepest incursion into Lebanon in 25 years.
On Wednesday, Israeli drone strikes killed at least six people in southern Lebanon and targeted a car just south of Beirut, Lebanese security sources said, while Israel said it intercepted a hostile aircraft likely fired by Hizbullah.
There was no immediate response from the Israeli military to Reuters questions about the drone strikes, but the attack on the car appeared to mark the closest attack to Beirut since Trump asked Israel not to hit the Lebanese capital, under a US-mediated partial ceasefire announced on Monday.
In his podcast comments, Trump acknowledged having called Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu “crazy” in a reportedly expletive-filled phone exchange over the fighting in Lebanon as he sought a deal over the wider war. – Reuters
