Tehran reported several deaths as the United States attacked Iran for a sixth consecutive night, with strikes targeting infrastructure in the country’s south.
Iranian media reported explosions and attacks in Qeshm Island, Bandar Abbas, Chabahar, Iranshahr and Bandar-e Khamir.
US Central Command said the latest assaults began at 18:00 GMT on Thursday, describing the operation as an effort “to further degrade Iranian military capabilities”.
A US attack on the Bandar-e Khamir bridge in the Hormozgan province killed at least seven people and injured nine, according to Iran’s Fars news agency.
The strikes, which come days after US President Donald Trump threatened to hit Iranian infrastructure, are the latest sign of peril for an interim US-Iran deal the two countries’ leaders signed last month. Both sides have since accused the other of violating the memorandum of understanding (MoU) amid a week of spiralling hostilities.
The US military also said forces under Central Command had redirected three commercial vessels attempting to bypass its blockade of Iran in the Gulf of Oman, disabling one vessel that failed to comply and boarding another.
Al Jazeera’s Aksel Zaimovic, reporting from Doha, Qatar, said that Gulf states are strengthening their air defences and military preparedness around crucial infrastructure “in this time of uncertainty”.
Countries including Qatar, Jordan and Bahrain have been targeted recently.
Doha said it had intercepted an Iranian strike on Friday, and that a child suffered a shrapnel injury.
‘Time of uncertainty’
Earlier on Thursday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed an attack on an airbase used by US forces in Bahrain, saying it was in response to a “barbaric” US attack that forced the evacuation of a children’s cancer hospital in the southwestern city of Ahvaz.
The IRGC also claimed further attacks on Kuwait and Jordan.
Kuwait said it was responding to continued Iranian missile and drone attacks after the military earlier reported that 32 drones had targeted vital facilities, causing material damage.
Iranian officials have signalled that they are prepared to widen the confrontation. Army spokesman Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia warned that Iranian attacks “will spread to new areas” if US strikes continued. Another military spokesman accused Washington of destabilising security in the Strait of Hormuz, saying the situation in the strategic waterway “will never return to how it was before” the war.
Ali Ahmadi, executive fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, said Tehran had so far treated the prospect of widening the conflict as leverage rather than an immediate military objective.
“It’s better essentially used as a threat than something that one would actually do,” Ahmadi told Al Jazeera, referring to the threat of expanding attacks on regional shipping.
US ‘always open to diplomacy’
Sina Azodi, assistant professor of Middle East Politics at George Washington University, said Washington and Tehran are “trying to force the other side to blink first and capitulate to the other side’s demands”.
“The US side wants the Iranians to come back to the negotiations and yield to the American demands,” Azodi told Al Jazeera. “On the Iranian side, they want the United States to first lift the blockade and also fully implement that MoU that was reached.”
Earlier in the week, Trump threatened to target Iran’s power plants and bridges if Tehran did not return to the negotiating table, which Iranian Brigadier General Ebrahim Zolfaghari warned would be met with a “crushing blow” on regional infrastructure.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday that Trump would hold Iran “accountable”, but “is always open to diplomacy”.
“They [Iranian officials] have expressed they still want to make a deal to the president. We’re talking to them, but again, the president is not going to allow them to fire on ships in the strait without paying a consequence for that,” said Leavitt.
Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Wednesday that Tehran has no plans to engage in talks with Washington and is focused solely on defending the country.
