(AFP) – Iran accused the United States on Saturday of violating their deal to end the Middle East war and hit US targets in the Gulf in retaliation for US strikes on Iranian territory. The exchange of fire, which came after Washington accused Tehran of attacking a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, raised doubts about efforts to keep the crucial waterway open while both sides negotiate a final deal.
Israel, meanwhile, launched strikes in Lebanon, and Hezbollah’s leader Naim Qassem rejected a deal to end the conflict that has also threatened to derail the wider US-Iran peace effort. US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the latest American strikes targeted Iranian missile and drone storage sites and coastal radar positions, and were a response to “unwarranted aggression against commercial shipping by Iranian forces” that “clearly violated the ceasefire”.
Iran said “these brutal attacks… are a blatant violation” of the deal to end the war, which began with US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February and has sent oil prices surging as it disrupted the world economy. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had struck US sites in the Gulf region and that “if the aggression is repeated, our response will be broader”.
HA Hellyer, of the London think tank the Royal United Services Institute, said “Iran is likely to continue calibrated, low-level coercive activity in and around the Strait of Hormuz… to create persistent pressure on international shipping without triggering a wider conflict”. He said November’s US midterm elections give Washington “incentives for a quicker agreement” while, for Iran, “a drawn-out negotiation accompanied by controlled pressure in the strait can work to its advantage”.
Bahrain said it was targeted by several Iranian drones early on Saturday and accused Tehran of “sabotaging peace efforts”. Also on Saturday, British maritime security agency UKMTO said an “unidentified projectile” damaged an oil tanker in the strait.
On the US strikes, Iranian media reported an explosion at a pier in the southern city of Sirik late Friday. It quoted a military source saying a “projectile impact” caused the blast. “Sirik Port is operating normally,” Mehr news agency later said. CENTCOM described the operation as “a powerful response to yesterday’s attack on a commercial ship that was transiting the Strait of Hormuz”. US President Donald Trump had earlier denounced what he described as an Iranian drone strike on the vessel as “a foolish violation of our ceasefire agreement”.
Iran has warned vessels not to enter or leave the Gulf through the strait without permission, but ships have continued to move, some using a route not authorized by Tehran. Despite the latest flare-up, oil prices have fallen sharply on hopes that traffic through Hormuz — through which in peacetime around a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas exports travel — would continue to recover. The economic impact on Iran remains unclear, but on Saturday the country’s statistics agency said that year-on-year inflation had hit 88.6 percent, up from 68 percent in February.
Lebanon was drawn into the Middle East war in early March when militant group Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel in support of Iran. That provoked an Israeli invasion and fighting that has also undermined the US-Iran ceasefire. On Friday, Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement supported by the US aimed at securing long-term peace between the two countries. But on Saturday, Hezbollah’s chief Qassem rejected the deal. He called it “humiliating, shameful and a surrender of sovereignty” and labelled it “null and void”.
He instead called for the full implementation of Washington’s deal with Tehran, which includes an end to the fighting in Lebanon. Hezbollah has repeatedly called for a full Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, but the Washington deal does not appear to provide for that. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted Israeli troops will remain in the so-called security zone they occupy in southern Lebanon and civilians prevented from returning until Hezbollah was disarmed.
On Saturday, the Israeli premier called the deal historic and “a blow to Iran and Hezbollah”. And he asserted that both the United States and Lebanon “have recognised Israel’s right to maintain a security zone inside Lebanon for as long as it remains necessary to safeguard our security.” The agreement is not universally popular in Israel. Netanyahu’s far-right security minister Itamar Ben Gvir denounced it as “a big mistake” on Saturday.
Ben Gvir insisted that only Israeli forces were capable of disarming Hezbollah. Earlier in the day, Defence Minister Israel Katz said he had told the country’s troops “to prepare for an extended stay in the security zone”. Meanwhile, the Israeli military said it carried out an airstrike on Saturday targeting suspected militants in the south — the first such attack since Washington announced the framework agreement between the two countries. Lebanon’s National News Agency then reported early Saturday evening that Israel had carried out fresh strikes in the south of the country. The health ministry later reported at least one killed and two wounded in an Israeli airstrike on Nabatieh al-Fawqa.
burs-amj/dcp/dc/dw/db – by AFP teams in Tehran, Washington, Jerusalem, Beirut, Manama and Dubai
© 2024 AFP
