Middle East war: Iran claims hit on US army as nation lays slain leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to rest

Iranian armed forces have launched attacks on US military infrastructure in Gulf states following US strikes on Iran’s southern coastal and eastern provinces, putting further strain on a three-week-old ceasefire agreement.

The attacks came on the day that Iran buried its slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at a shrine in Mashhad, the culmination of a week of mass funeral processions and rallies.

Mr Khamenei was killed in a US air strike on the first day of the war on February 28.

Mr Khamenei’s body was carried by truck slowly through crammed streets towards the Shrine of Imam Reza.

Black-clad mourners waved Iranian flags, photographs of the late leader and red placards with revolutionary slogans.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Navy said the US attacks and intervention in redirecting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz were disrupting the waterway’s gradual reopening.

The Guards said the number of vessels transiting the strait under Iranian supervision had recovered to about 50 per cent of pre-war levels over the past two weeks, adding that permission was being granted only to ships using routes designated by Iran.

Any further US. intervention will draw a “crushing response,” the Guards said.

The US military said on Wednesday that its latest strikes were aimed at keeping the Strait open after it said Iranian forces had struck three tankers in the area.

The assault came hours after US President Donald Trump said he believed the interim ceasefire with Iran to be “over”.

While Iran has not claimed responsibility for the ship attacks, analysts say Iran uses such actions to gain leverage in negotiations.

Oil prices, which had spiked amid concerns over the effect of the renewed attacks on shipping and global supplies, fell back on Thursday as investors weighed whether the flare-up was tactical and temporary or might augur a complete collapse in the ceasefire.

Iranian officials said the US attacks had killed 14 people and injured 78 across five provinces on July 8 and 9, state media reported.

The Fars news agency said one US strike had hit a rail bridge used for trade with Russia and China.

Several explosions were heard on Thursday morning in Iran’s Bushehr province and in Bandar Abbas, a port city on Iran’s south coast, the Mehr news agency reported.

Bushehr is home to a Russian-built nuclear power plant and a local official later told state media that a US projectile had hit the perimeter area of the facility.

The perimeter had already been hit several times before an April 8 ceasefire.

Iran’s army said in a statement released by state media that it had launched attacks at US Patriot systems in Kuwait, an early-warning site in Qatar and a US army fuel depot in Bahrain.

Kuwait said its armed forces had engaged with a cruise missile, three ballistic missiles and 10 drones in its airspace, and that one person had been injured from falling shrapnel.

Sirens also sounded in Jordan after missiles launched from Iran were detected, the state news agency reported.

Eight were intercepted, with no injuries or damage reported.

The Revolutionary Guards later said Iran had fired 10 ballistic missiles at Jordan’s Azraq military base, which is used by US forces, and also a US military control centre in the Middle East, without elaborating.

Qatar, which hosts the largest US base in the region and has often mediated between the US and its adversaries including Iran, condemned attacks on commercial shipping but also called for a return to diplomacy.

The foreign ministers of Turkey and Oman also stressed the need to avoid further military escalation in separate calls with their Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araqchi.

In a call with the army chief of Pakistan, which has also mediated in the conflict, Araqchi condemned what he called US “warmongering policies”.