DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran fired on U.S. allies in the Gulf early Wednesday following a night of American bombardment that Iranian officials say included a deadly strike on a wedding party. The latest violence came after a monthlong lull in fighting. The six-month war has led to a spike in oil prices, roiled the global economy and posed increasing political problems for U.S.
President Donald Trump's Republican Party ahead of November midterm elections. Fighting has escalated since the American military hit Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, saying Iran was planning to use them to shoot mines into the waterway. Iran retaliated by firing missiles at American bases in Jordan that were intercepted.
American military resources are stretched and political pressure in Washington is mounting, while Iran's economy falters. Iran's currency hit another record low on Wednesday, with traders in Tehran exchanging 2.20 million rials for one U.S. dollar, a 10% hike from last week's record. Neither side can continue indefinitely between full-scale war and a truce, said Hamidreza Azizi, senior Iran analyst at the Crisis Group, an international think tank.
"At some point, one of the sides may see a need to escalate in order to break this cycle," he cautioned. "So that could bring the two sides to a point that they have been trying to avoid until now, which is a full-scale war." The latest flare-up in violence came as the standoff seemed to be shifting slightly more in the U.S.' favor, with the price of oil around $80 a barrel and Iranian leaders talking about growing economic hardships, said Sascha Bruchmann, an analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Middle East office in Bahrain. Brad Cooper said the strait had been secretly cleared of mines and that the U.S.
Navy had helped nearly 1,500 commercial vessels carrying some 750 million barrels of oil pass through in recent months — still far below prewar levels. "He basically told the world oil is flowing out and Iran is not capable of restricting the U.S.'s approach," Bruchmann said. "The U.S. is trying to reinstall some kind of confidence into the global oil markets … and the Iranians had to respond to that by reinserting insecurity and doubt." Since the fighting resumed, the price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, has climbed to around $95, up more than 30% from the start of the war.
Following the strikes at Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain said they had also come under attack, without reporting any casualties. "You will soon see that Iran's new strategy on the battlefield, in diplomacy, and in confronting the economic blockade will shatter your foundations," the recently appointed head of Iran's powerful Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, said on X. In Iraq, where Iranian-backed forces are active, Kurdish authorities said they had intercepted 10 drones laden with explosives in the Irbil area.
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