Shafaqna Pakistan: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has threatened to close “all other export corridors that benefit the US and its allies” after Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz and the United States reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports.
In a statement carried by state news agency IRNA, the IRGC said regional energy exports would either remain accessible to all or be denied to all.
The latest threat to global shipping comes a day after the US military said it began a fresh round of strikes “to continue degrading Iranian capabilities used to attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.”
The United States said Iran had attacked seven commercial ships over the last week, leading to nearly a dozen crew members being killed, missing or injured.
The US military said late on Tuesday that it hit dozens of military targets near the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian coastal areas. The wave of strikes lasted seven hours, the US Central Command said in a statement.
‘END OF AMERICA’S EVILS’
The IRGC said on Wednesday that the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed until what it described as “the end of America’s evils”. Before the war began in February, about a fifth of global oil and gas shipments passed through Hormuz each day.
The Guards said they had targeted what they described as command-and-control, logistics, fuel and military equipment facilities belonging to the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, in response to the latest US strikes in the Strait of Hormuz.
They also said they had set fire to and destroyed what they described as a US logistics facility in Kuwait’s Mina Abdullah and that their air force had struck what they described as a US base at Azraq in Jordan, targeting aircraft hangars. They said some of the US attacks had been launched from bases on Jordanian territory.
Earlier on Wednesday, Kuwait’s state news agency reported that a fire was brought under control at a site targeted in Iranian attacks. It was not immediately clear whether the fire was at the same site referred to in the IRGC statement.
Jordan’s air defence intercepted and shot down three ballistic missiles that entered the country’s airspace from Iranian territory early on Wednesday.
The hostilities between Iran and the US re-ignited last week, fraying an already fragile truce reached in June after several months of fighting that has killed thousands.
Source: Dunya News
