Iran has launched a new wave of missile and drone attacks across the Gulf and attacked ships in the Strait of Hormuz, while warning the US and Europe of military action.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which appears to be making the decisions in Tehran, unveiled a new plan for transit on its own terms via the waterway, the Telegraph reports.
The plan, in practice, could expand the IRGC's monitoring and control zone beyond the Strait of Hormuz to areas as far as Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates, a key transit route used by the UAE to bypass the strait for oil exports, and brought the forces to the brink of confrontation with CENTCOM forces.
Following this action and the launch of what US President Donald Trump described as "Operation Freedom", reports emerged on Monday afternoon of warning shots being fired towards the US Navy.
Trump said several IRGC fast boats had been sunk, while the head of US Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper, said US military helicopters had sunk six small Iranian boats that were targeting civilian ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Admiral Cooper said the US military cleared a passage in the Strait of Hormuz that is free of any Iranian mines for ships to resume navigation, while the US Navy is creating a "protective umbrella" that includes US helicopters and fighter jets to protect cargo ships leaving the strait.
Meanwhile, Iran's attacks on Fujairah and targets in the United Arab Emirates have received widespread condemnation from the international community, particularly from Gulf Cooperation Council states.
European leaders who traveled to Yerevan for the European Political Community summit also condemned Iran's destabilizing actions in the Persian Gulf and reaffirmed their support for the United Arab Emirates.
The United Arab Emirates said it had used 12 ballistic missiles, three other rockets and four drones launched by Iran on Monday.
A residential building housing employees in Oman was also targeted on Monday, officials said, although they did not provide details about the incident.
Iran could strike Europe, claims hard-line politician
Hossein Shariatmadari, a hardline politician close to the late Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the US-Israeli strikes, told the conservative Iranian daily Kayhan on Tuesday that “the military bases of those European countries that will be placed at America’s disposal can and should become legitimate and lawful targets for our military strikes.”
Tehran's leading conservative, who has previously taken tough stances against the nuclear deal and any agreement with the US, went on to say that "Europe is extremely vulnerable to any potential attacks from the Islamic Republic and has virtually zero capacity to deal with them."
In his column in Kayhan, Shariatmadari wrote that European countries "know that they can hit them and that when we do, we hit them hard."
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf — who led the Iranian delegation in the only round of talks held in Islamabad and whom some had seen as Trump's preferred option for a deal — posted a message on X talking about "consolidating a new equation" in the Strait of Hormuz.
Claiming that the continuation of the current situation is intolerable for the United States, while Iran “has not even started yet,” Ghalibaf stated that “the security of maritime transport and energy transit under the control of the United States and its allies has been jeopardized by the violation of the ceasefire and the imposition of a blockade.”
"However, their damage will soon be limited," he added.
Explosion in southern Iran
Meanwhile, reports on the ground from inside Iran also point to rising tensions.
On Tuesday morning, the Mehr news agency reported a fire at the Dayyer port in Bushehr province.
Citing Majid Omrani, head of the Dayyer port fire brigade, the agency wrote that "currently two fiberglass merchant ships are engulfed in flames and firefighters are working to bring the blaze under control."
He said the cause of the incident will not be known until firefighting operations are fully completed and that further information will be released in due course.
Meanwhile, a number of residents in southern Iran trying to access the internet have posted messages on social media reporting explosions in Bandar Abbas and on Qeshm Island.
The Telegram channel Vahid Online also reported receiving messages from several residents of Hormozgan province saying they had heard explosions.
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