The United States said it carried out new strikes on Iran on Wednesday evening as President Donald Trump warned Tehran to “better behave.”
The US military said “Iranian military capabilities used to threaten ships” passing through the Strait of Hormuz were attacked, and that it separately fired on a ship attempting to break a renewed blockade of Iranian ports.
It came after Iran said it had carried out strikes on US military targets in the region, including in Bahrain and Kuwait, as the fifth day of renewed fighting violated their preliminary agreement to end the war.
Iran’s chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, meanwhile, told state media that Tehran has “no reason” to honor the agreement if it actually benefits it.
Trump late Tuesday threatened to attack bridges and power plants if Iran does not return to talks next week.
Asked by reporters late Wednesday if he would give a deadline before doing so, he replied: “I don’t like to give deadlines, but they pretty much know, they know the history… they better behave.”
He later told delegates at a defense summit that Iran was “not happy right now.”
“They want to reach an agreement so badly. They don’t like what we do,” he said. “We’ll figure out if we want to come to terms with them or just get it over with.”
However, Ghalibaf said Iran’s national security depends on Tehran’s compliance with the “Iranian agreements” in the strait.
He added that the negotiations – along with the war – were part of Iran’s resistance strategy as it entered into an “existential” conflict with the US.