Before Wednesday’s flare-up of hostilities, mediators had expressed optimism about bringing the US and Iran back to the negotiating table following the collapse of an interim agreement amid renewed fighting over the strait of Hormuz.
A regional official quoted by the AP said mediators were “still trying with both sides” to restore calm and get the ceasefire back on track. He gave no details on whether progress was being made.
Another official said regional countries would continue to push to de-escalate the situation, but that prospects for successful mediation were slim as both sides continued to attack each other and shown no inclination to stop.
“We’re in a very bad place right now,” the unnamed official said.
Welcome to our live coverage of the continuing crisis in the Middle East.
The US has said it is conducting airstrikes in Iran, after a lull of several days in direct US attacks on targets in Iran.
Donald Trump said America would strike Iran hard, telling reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday: “We’re going to be hitting them very hard, because it’s our turn to hit them. They know it’s coming.”
The US military said its attacks were a “powerful response to yesterday’s attempted Iranian attacks on US forces based in the Middle East”.
On Wednesday Iran launched a barrage of missiles at American military installations in Jordan – its first attack in the region since the pause in fighting – meanwhile the US partnered with Saudi Arabia to strike Tehran-backed militias in Iraq, killing at least 20 fighters and six Iranian advisers.
Elsewhere, drone strikes ignited fires on two natural gas vessels at the Egyptian port of Damietta, according to Ambrey, a British maritime security firm. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the strikes on a US-owned floating storage facility and a Greek-owned tanker. No injuries were reported.
A strike on Egypt by Iran or its allies, if confirmed, would mark a significant widening of the conflict. Asked during an Oval Office event if Iran was responsible for the strikes, Trump responded: “It’s a little more of the same.”
The flare-up on multiple fronts after several days of relative calm raised the risk of a return to all-out war. It also underscored the difficulty of winding down a five-month conflict.
The US-Saudi strikes came hours after Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, departed his first meeting with Trump since they launched the war against Iran on 28 February.
In other news:
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The renewed hostilities sent oil prices spiking. Brent crude, the international standard, jumped 7.3% to $88 a barrel.
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The office of the Iraqi president, Nizar Amidi, called the US-Saudi airstrikes on multiple logistics and weapons sites in eastern Iraq “a blatant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty”.
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An oil refinery in Jazan, on the Red Sea coast, had temporarily shut down due to “relatively significant” damage from a Houthi attack on Saturday, a Saudi official told the Associated Press.
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Saudi Arabia is seeking to build an international coalition to protect shipping in the Red Sea from Houthi attacks, Reuters quoted two people familiar with the deliberations as saying.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
