DUBAI, JUL 16 (AP): The United States intensified its strikes on Iran early Thursday, hitting targets further north as American forces also fired into a ship the US accused of trying to break its naval blockade on the Islamic Republic. Iran retaliated with missile and drone fire targeting US allies in the region before dawn and warned its attacks may escalate.
Days of back-and-forth strikes by the US and Iran across the Middle East — and renewed threats to the Strait of Hormuz — have shredded the interim deal to end the Iran war and could tip the region back into all-out war. Already, Iranian officials say US strikes have killed more than 35 people and wounded over 300 others.
Strikes also reached into areas around Iran’s capital, Tehran, for the first time in this latest round of violence, showing a widening set of targets for the Americans.
When the US and Israel launched the war on Iran on February 28, Tehran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic, a move that sent the price of oil, fertiliser and many other goods soaring far beyond the region and gave Iran major leverage in negotiations.
Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesperson for the Iranian military’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, threatened that Iran could launch widespread attacks on regional infrastructure if the US acts on President Donald Trump’s repeated warnings that America could hit Iranian bridges and power plants.
“All the infrastructure in the region will be crushed under the steel blows of the powerful armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran” should Trump’s threat be carried out, Zolfaghari said.
“Under no circumstances and in no way will we allow America, as a foreign and extra-regional country, to interfere in the Strait of Hormuz,” he added. “This is Iran’s invincible red line.”
Trump says a peace deal is still possible
Trump again insisted Iran was ready to strike a peace deal, but he did not elaborate.
“They don’t like what we’re doing, and they do want to settle. We’ll find out whether or not we settle with them, or we just finish it off,” he said Wednesday at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania.
Mediators have sought to calm the tensions, but so far have been unsuccessful. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday said it was still trying to bring the US and Tehran to the table, while acknowledging that mediation was becoming increasingly difficult.
“Whenever the parties exhaust the logic of escalation, the formula for peace is there,” ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi told a news conference.
Trump separately said on social media that Tehran made a goodwill gesture by releasing an American citizen wrongly detained in Iran since 2024. He didn’t release further details. Human rights lawyer Jared Genser released a statement identifying the detainee as his client Dena Karari, a US-Iranian citizen who runs a nonprofit and was charged with espionage.
Iran did not immediately acknowledge the release and her case was not publicly known, as is sometimes the case with detentions in the Islamic Republic.
Iran threatens to destroy ‘all infra in the region’
Iran’s joint military command stepped up its threats on Thursday as intensifying US airstrikes target the country, saying it would destroy “all the infrastructure in the region”.
The threat from the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters referenced US President Donald Trump’s repeated warning that he could launch attacks against power plants and bridges in Iran. Col Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesperson for the Iranian military’s Khatam Al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, issued the warning. “All the infrastructure in the region will be crushed under the steel blows of the powerful armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran” should Trump’s threat be carried out, Zolfaghari said.
“Under no circumstances and in no way will we allow America, as a foreign and extra-regional country, to interfere in the Strait of Hormuz,” he added. “This is Iran’s invincible red line.”