Iran threatens to block ‘other export corridors’

TEHRAN, July 16:  The US conducted a new wave of strikes against Iran’s coastal defence systems and cruise missile storage and launch sites yesterday after reimposing a naval blockade of Iranian ports, while Iran threatened to shut off “all other export corridors”.

The strikes mark the latest escalation of attacks and counterattacks launched by the two sides as they vie for control of the Strait of Hormuz, which carried about a fifth of global oil and gas shipments before the war. 

The IRGC said that the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed until what it described as “the end of America’s evils”. Oil prices extended gains by about one percent yesterday, after settling on Tuesday on a new one-month high.

“At 6:00 am ET today, US Central Command forces began launching a wave of strikes against Iran,” the US military said. “The strikes are designed to further degrade military capabilities Iranian forces have used to attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.”

There were no immediate reports of attacks in Iranian media. US Central Command said in a statement the military had targeted coastal defence systems and cruise missile storage and launch sites on Iran’s Greater Tunb Island and had completed the wave of strikes within around 90 minutes, reports Reuters.

Late on Tuesday the US military said it had hit dozens of military targets near the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian coastal areas in strikes lasting seven hours. At least seven active-duty and conscript personnel were killed in the overnight US strikes on the Bampur military base, Iran’s army said.

In response, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had struck US military targets in the region, including in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan. It also threatened yesterday to shut off more regional energy export seaways, saying the US “must brace for the closure of all other export corridors that benefit the US and its allies”.

US President Donald Trump has said that attacks on Iran will continue until he decides that they are enough and that he will “save energy targets in Iran for last”.

“Iran has some fight left, but they don’t have much,” he claimed in an interview delivered to Fox News on Tuesday night. “We will knock out their power plants… we will knock out all their bridges until they get to the negotiating table,” he added.

Trump also said that US representatives held talks with Iran on Tuesday amid renewed strikes on the country.
Analysts have said Iran has been signalling it may use its Houthi allies in Yemen to shut the Bab el-Mandeb gateway to the Red Sea, opening a new front against Washington and putting two of the world’s most vital energy arteries at risk.

A senior Houthi official warned on Monday that the group was prepared to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Houthi forces fired missiles at Saudi Arabia after accusing the kingdom of bombing an airport under their control on Monday, breaking a four-year truce in the conflict between the kingdom and the Iran-aligned group.

Meanwhile, Abu Mujahid al-Assaf, an official of Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq, has said that the launch of “a new war against Iran would trigger an immediate response from the Iraqi resistance”, Al Jazeera reports.

As tensions escalated, Trump on Monday floated the idea of a 20 percent fee on shipping through the strait, which drew sharp criticism from the UN shipping agency and others. On Tuesday, he scrapped the idea and said, without providing details, that he would instead seek investment deals with Gulf states.

AFP add, Tehran warned Thursday it would target regional infrastructure if the United States carried out threats to attack Iran's infrastructure, as the war in the Middle East resumed.

The spokesman for Iran's military headquarters said that if the US followed through on its threats, "all infrastructure in the region" would be "crushed under the steel blows" of Iran's armed forces. �"AGENCIES