• Centcom says targetted oil tanker for “violating” US blockade.
• Iran launches missile and drone attacks on US-linked Gulf targets.
• US says strikes on Bahrain and Kuwait were intercepted or failed.
  

Gulf hostilities flared anew on Wednesday, after the US military fired a missile at a ship on Qeshm Island that was attempting to sail toward an Iranian port “in violation of an American blockade”, disabling the vessel, the US military said.

The Botswana-flagged M/T Lexie — an unladen oil tanker — “ignored repeated warnings” over 24 hours, and an American warplane “ultimately disabled the vessel by firing a Hellfire missile into the ship’s engine room,” the US military’s Central Command (Centcom) said in a statement.

In response to what the IRGC described as a US attack on a communications tower south of Qeshm Island, Iran targeted US assets in Bahrain and Kuwait.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps attacked the US Fifth Fleet headquarters and an airbase and helicopters in a “regional country” using missiles and drones, Iranian media reported

The US military said Iranian missile attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait and other regional targets were either thwarted or failed, as diplomacy between Washington and Tehran showed little progress.

Two Iranian missiles shot at Kuwait fell short or broke apart in flight, while several ballistic missiles aimed at regional targets failed and three missiles heading for Bahrain were intercepted, US Central Command said.

Since the conflict began in late February, Iran has repeatedly attacked targets in the Gulf region where US military bases are located.

Central Command said all the attacks failed and that US forces remained ready to repel “unwarranted Iranian aggression.”

The latest flare-up comes more than three months after the initial US and Israeli strikes on Iran, with the conflict mired in a stalemate under a shaky ceasefire and the Strait of Hormuz largely closed to maritime traffic.

Iran and the US said last week that they had reached a tentative initial agreement to halt the war. But the two sides have yet to sign off on the deal.

Iranian media reported that Tehran has not communicated with Washington for several days, but US President Donald Trump said negotiations have not stopped.

“The conversations between us have been going on continuously, including four days ago, three days ago, two days ago, one day ago, and today,” he said in a social media post.

Israel keeps up strikes in Lebanon

The war that began on February 28 has killed thousands of people, mainly in Iran and Lebanon, while also causing global economic pain ⁠by pushing up energy prices.

It also triggered the latest round of conflict between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, with Israel pursuing its deepest incursion into Lebanon in 25 years.

On Tuesday, Israel kept up strikes on a string of towns in southern Lebanon, Lebanese security sources said, despite a US-mediated partial ceasefire announced on Monday.

The announcement failed to reassure many Lebanese, 1.2 million of whom have been displaced, and an Israeli drone over Beirut kept residents on edge on Tuesday.