The continued exchanges of fire have raised fears that the two sides could return to all-out war. Share full articleImageEnghelab Square in central Tehran on Monday.Credit...Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times See more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra más de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de búsqueda. Add The New York Times on GoogleAgrega The New York Times en Google Latest PinnedShirin HakimEric Schmitt and Qasim Nauman Here’s the latest.The United States and Iran traded a new round of strikes early Thursday, bringing the two sides closer to a return to all-out war. President Trump had vowed on Wednesday to keep up military pressure on Tehran because Iranian leaders were taking “too long to negotiate.” The American attack began shortly after midnight in Tehran, according to the U.S. military’s Central Command. Explosions were heard in Qeshm near the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the southern cities of Bandar Abbas, Minab and Sirik, Iranian news outlets reported. Central Command said just after 4:30 a.m. in Iran that its latest strikes had concluded. Mr. Trump had told a Fox News reporter hours earlier that American strikes would resume the following night if Tehran did not capitulate in negotiations to end the war that began with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February. Iran said it had responded with two waves of attacks on targets at U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain, but there was no immediate confirmation of that. Iran also said that the Strait of Hormuz was now closed to any type of vessel, including oil tankers and commercial ships. The U.S. military denied that the strait was closed. Kuwait’s military said on Thursday morning that it was intercepting hostile targets, and the country’s civil aviation authority briefly closed Kuwaiti airspace citing a possible risk to civilian aircraft. Warning sirens were activated in Bahrain, the country’s interior ministry said, without saying what had triggered them. The latest exchange of fire followed U.S. strikes roughly 24 hours earlier, in which the U.S. military said that its jets had hit multiple Iranian targets in response to the downing of an American Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday. Iran responded by launching its own strikes on U.S. targets in the region. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made clear that the new strikes were meant not as retaliation for a particular military action but to pressure Tehran to agree to peace on terms agreeable to Mr. Trump. “If we need to negotiate with bombs, we’ll negotiate with bombs,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters in Tampa, Fla. The U.S. strikes appear to contradict Mr. Trump’s repeated reassurances that a peace deal with Iran is imminent. They also further undercut the credibility of the cease-fire declared two months ago, after which U.S. and Iranian forces traded occasional attacks and issued almost daily contradictory claims about the fighting and peace talks. The claimed cease-fire “is more like a lesser-fire, as we have seen with the escalating attacks and rhetoric over the last 48 hours,” António Guterres, the United Nations’ secretary general, said on Wednesday. Bahrain’s interior ministry said falling debris from the interception of Iranian drones injured an 11-year-old girl, and damaged several vehicles and homes in the capital, Manama, and Hamad Town. Kuwait’s airspace has reopened and air traffic has returned to normal, the country’s civil aviation authority said. It had closed Kuwaiti airspace earlier on Thursday because of what it said were Iranian attacks. The Kuwait Army says its air defenses are intercepting hostile targets, without saying whether they are missiles or drones, or where they came from. And in Bahrain, the authorities have activated warnings sirens, the interior ministry says, without mentioning what triggered them. U.S. Central Command says American forces have completed their latest strikes against Iran. The attacks targeted Iranian military surveillance capabilities, communication systems and air defense sites, according to the Centcom statement. Explosions and air-defense activity were reported across parts of southern Iran early Thursday. The clearest reports were concentrated in Hormozgan Province, along Iran’s southern coast, where Iranian state and semiofficial media listed explosions or impacts in Sirik, Minab and Bandar Abbas, a major port city with key military and naval facilities. In Asaluyeh, Iranian outlets reported air-defense activity and a possible missile interception, but officials continued to deny any attack or explosion at South Pars or nearby energy facilities, among the most important gas infrastructure sites in Iran. Gen. Majid Mousavi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards aerospace forces, threatened to turn the entire region into “hell.” In a short written statement published in state news agency IRNA, he said: “You are making the holy Strait of Hormuz unsafe? We will turn the entire region into hell from across Iran. This is the response to America’s aggression in the region.” Residents of Karaj, a city about 20 miles southwest of Tehran, reported hearing large explosions in the early hours of Thursday morning. Iran’s armed forces have a missile factory and military bases in Karaj, including the Bidganeh military base. In March, the United States struck a major civilian bridge on a highway linking Karaj and Tehran that had not yet opened to the public. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they carried out two waves of attacks early Thursday targeting 18 important targets belonging to U.S. forces at Ali Al-Salem and Ahmad Al-Jaber air bases in Kuwait and Sheikh Isa Air Base in Bahrain, according to IRNA, Iran’s official state news agency. The Guards said the strikes were carried out in response to American attacks on I.R.G.C. service units, coastal posts, police command sites and the Bandar Abbas airport area. They claimed the strikes had “hit and destroyed” the targets. The claim could not be independently verified, and there was no immediate confirmation from U.S., Kuwaiti or Bahraini officials. Reporters with The New York Times Visual Investigations team Strikes early Wednesday destroyed what appears to be a drinking-water facility on Iran’s southern coast, near the Strait of Hormuz, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Around the time of the strikes, the U.S. Central Command said in a post on X that it had conducted attacks near the strait “with precision munitions from U.S. Air Force and Navy fighter jets.” Iranian state media reported that the U.S. had hit water storage buildings and a local official said that water was cut off to more than 20,000 people living in a town and villages nearby. Temperatures in the area have reached above 100 degrees Fahrenheit this week. A commercial satellite image from the morning of June 9 shows two small water structures in the village of Bemani. Both have light blue pipes, typical for water distribution infrastructure, as is their location — on a hill outside of a populated area. The buildings are consistent with the description of the two storage tanks that Abdolhamid Hamzehpour, the head of the provincial water authority, said were destroyed. It is unclear if the U.S. intentionally struck the water facilities, or knew what was in the buildings. Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime under international law. Videos released on Wednesday by Iranian media outlets, including state media, and the provincial water authority show that the roof of the smaller building collapsed. The larger facility next to it still stands, but images show that it has a small impact hole in the center of its roof. The Times confirmed the images of the structure by matching the visible surroundings to reference imagery of the site. A photo of fragments that Tasnim, a semiofficial Iranian news agency, said were recovered from the site showed remnants identified as a GBU-39 bomb by researchers with the Open Source Munitions Portal, a database of weapon fragments documented in conflict zones. The GBU-39, a small precision-guided glide bomb in the 250-pound class, is consistent with the damage shown in the footage of the damaged building: a clean hole punched through the building’s roof and limited blast damage around it. Both buildings stand outside the village, and there is no other infrastructure in the immediate vicinity. Hitting remote buildings and striking the center of a roof are considered likely indicators of a precision strike. In a text message, a Central Command spokesman said he was aware of the reports of damage at the facility, but did not provide further information.
Original Source: NYTimes
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