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Escalating US-Iran strikes threaten interim peace agreement
Boats anchored off Oman's northern Musandam peninsula near the strait of Hormuz. Iran launched attacks on US sites in the Gulf in response to American strikes on Tehran. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Boats anchored off Oman's northern Musandam peninsula near the strait of Hormuz. Iran launched attacks on US sites in the Gulf in response to American strikes on Tehran. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Escalating US-Iran strikes threaten interim peace agreement Tehran attacks Bahrain and Kuwait amid efforts to open strait of Hormuz without Iran’s direct oversight Fresh hostilities in Gulf suggest US-Iran memorandum was too broadly worded A new round of escalating strikes between Iran and the US has continued, further undermining the fragile interim peace agreement between the two countries, and prompting Donald Trump to threaten violence that would ensure Iran “will no longer exist”. On Sunday, Tehran launched drone and missile attacks against Bahrain and Kuwait after new US strikes on sites in southern Iran, and threatened a “complete halt” to negotiations to end the war. Trump said that a moment might come soon when he abandoned talks and the US would “militarily finish the job”. The US president posted on social media: “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!” Earlier on Sunday, Kuwait, which hosts a major US army base, said it had intercepted two ballistic missiles and that there were no reports of injuries or damage, while Bahrain’s interior ministry said the Iranian strikes had damaged a residential building near the international airport and that no one had been killed. Qatar’s interior ministry said one Qatari national had been killed and second person injured by shrapnel from “military operations in the area”. The two were on a boat that went missing on Saturday and was located early on Sunday. The ministry did not give the location of the incident and did not say whether the shrapnel was linked to the Iranian drone attacks. But late on Sunday a US official said both sides had agreed to halt recent hostilities and renew talks on the strait of Hormuz. “Technical talks are slated to continue on all areas of the MOU. Both sides will stand down for now and vessels can move freely,” the official said, referring to the 14-point memorandum of understanding that was agreed earlier this month and under which the strait would be re-opened for traffic. View image in fullscreen Bahrain civil defence and rescue personnel work in a residential building in Muharraq, which the interior ministry said had been hit by an Iranian drone. Photograph: Bahrain Police Media/Reuters The latest violence has been triggered by efforts to reopen the strait of Hormuz to all shipping without Iran’s direct oversight. The strategically critical waterway, which carried a fifth of the world’s oil and liquid gas supplies before the war, has long been considered an international passageway. US Central Command said in a stat
