US expands strikes into northern Iran
- Last updated: July 16, 2026 | 11:54
The United States intensified its strikes targeting Iran early on Thursday, hitting targets further north as American forces also fired into a ship it accused of trying to break its naval blockade on the Islamic Republic. Iran retaliated with missile and drone fire targeting Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait before dawn and warned its attacks may escalate.
Days of back-and-forth strikes by the US and Iran across the Middle East - and renewed threats to the Strait of Hormuz - have shredded the interim deal to end the Iran war and could tip the region back into all-out war.
Already, Iranian officials say US strikes have killed more than 35 people and wounded over 300 others.
Strikes also reached into areas around Iran’s capital, Tehran, for the first time in this latest round of violence, showing a widening set of targets for the Americans.
When the US and Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic, a move that sent the price of oil, fertiliser and many other goods soaring far beyond the region and gave Iran major leverage in negotiations.
Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesperson for the Iranian military’s Khatam Al Anbiya Central Headquarters, escalated Iran's threats by referencing US President Donald Trump's repeated warning America could hit Iranian bridges and power plants.
"All the infrastructure in the region will be crushed under the steel blows of the powerful armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran” should Trump’s threat be carried out, Zolfaghari said.
"Under no circumstances and in no way will we allow America, as a foreign and extra-regional country, to interfere in the Strait of Hormuz,” he added. "This is Iran’s invincible red line.”
Those rising prices pose a particular challenge to Trump and his Republican Party, which hopes to retain control of Congress in elections in November. But Washington has struggled to successfully reopen the waterway, leading to Trump reimposing the naval blockade on Wednesday. Mediators have sought to calm the tensions, but so far have been unsuccessful.
Trump again insisted Iran was ready to strike a peace deal, but he did not elaborate.
"They don’t like what we’re doing, and they do want to settle. We’ll find out whether or not we settle with them, or we just finish it off,” he said on Wednesday at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania.
Trump separately said on social media that Tehran made a goodwill gesture by releasing an American citizen wrongly detained in Iran since 2024. He didn’t release further details. Human rights lawyer Jared Genser released a statement identifying the detainee as his client Dena Karari, a US-Iranian citizen who runs a nonprofit and was charged with espionage.
Iran did not immediately acknowledge the release and her case was not publicly known, as is sometimes the case with detentions in the Islamic Republic.
The US strikes early on Thursday hit around Tehran, state media reported. It also reported that American attacks targeted Semnan province, home to Iran’s ballistic missile production and space programme.
Iranian media also reported strikes on Thursday morning around the provinces of Hamedan, Hormozgan, Khuzestan, Lorestan, Markazi, and Sistan and Baluchistan.
On Wednesday, the US resumed striking Iran during daylight, further showing the increasing tempo of the attacks. An attack on Greater Tunb Island, a strategic point in the Strait of Hormuz, targeted Iranian defense and missile sites, Central Command said.
Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Al Zaidi condemned an overnight drone attack on the city of Irbil in Iraq’s semiautonomous northern Kurdish region. The drone, which authorities said had been intercepted, came during his trip to the US in which he said Iraq would work to disarm non-state armed groups, including those backed by Iran.
The latest round of fighting is focused on the Strait of Hormuz. How to reopen the strait has bedeviled the US since Iran choked it off in the early days of the war.
During the interim deal, some ships began moving through the passage using a route near Oman overseen by the US military that is outside Tehran’s control.
In recent days, Iran attacked ships using that route and back-and-forth attacks ensued. The US has threatened to reopen the strait by force, but experts say that would require a much bigger armada if not tens of thousands of ground troops.
Imposing the blockade is another way to put pressure on Iran.
But in the meantime, oil prices are rising. The price for Brent crude oil, the international standard, traded above $85 a barrel on Thursday, more than 15% higher than the price before the war, but still well below the nearly $120 reached at the height of the conflict.
Associated Press