SEO: Iran, Strait of Hormuz, Oil Prices
We are now three months into what was originally pitched as a two-to-four-week conflict with Iran. While the Trump administration signaled it was close to reaching a deal with Iran last week, that has all gone out the window as Iran and the U.S. renewed airstrikes against the country over the weekend. As a result, Iran announced on Monday that it will no longer continue negotiations to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Despite ostensibly being under a ceasefire, AP reports that the U.S. and Iran have exchanged several missile strikes over the last week. The first wave of strikes came on Wednesday, as the U.S. launched several missiles into Southern Iran. Iran retaliated by launching missiles at a U.S. military base in Kuwait, but those were intercepted.
U.S. Central Command said that it launched more strikes on Saturday and Sunday, targeting air defenses, a ground control station, and two attack drones, which it said posed a threat to ships in the area. Central Command has maintained that both of the strikes last week were acts of “self-defense.”
“The measured and deliberate strikes occurred … in response to aggressive Iranian actions that included the shootdown of a U.S. MQ-1 drone that was operating over international waters,” Central Command said.
In addition to the U.S. strikes, NBC News reports that Israel, which was also under a ceasefire with Iran, launched strikes against Tehran, where the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia is located. The strikes by Israel are what have caused Iran to walk away from peace negotiations.
“Due to the continuation of the Zionist regime’s actions in Lebanon and given that Lebanon was one of the preconditions of the ceasefire and that this ceasefire has now been violated on all fronts … the Iranian negotiating team will suspend ‘talks and the exchange of texts through mediators,’” the semiofficial news agency Tasnim reported.
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