Iran-US war latest: Pentagon ‘extends troop deployment in Middle East to next year’ in sign that war will drag on

President Donald Trump has said that the US is prepared to launch another attack on Iran at “any time”.

"We took out all of the new equipment that they tried to build along the Strait of Hormuz - some defensive, some offensive,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

“It was a very heavy attack last night, and we're prepared to do another one any time we want.” He added that a renewed campaign would not last “too long”.

It came as Iranians and others in the region feared a return of the conflict in earnest after the biggest exchange of fire between Tehran and Washington since July.

US attacks hit the southern coast of Iran while Tehran hit back at US assets in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Iraq.

Iran accused Washington of hitting a wedding party, killing four people and wounding dozens, while its health minister later said 18 people in total had been killed and 108 injured in the latest wave of US strikes.

The US military said the targets of its attacks were air defences, radar systems, maritime assets, mine-laying capabilities and communications sites on Tuesday.

Six commodity vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, down from 11 a day earlier and well below the 10-day average of about 13, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing preliminary data from Kpler.

The vessels included two very large gas carriers, two long-range tankers, one Supramax tanker and one Panamax tanker.

The figure is likely to be revised as some vessels typically switch off their transponders while passing through the strait.

In an age of rogue lawlessness dominating international affairs since Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office and then staggered about the globe like a toddler with a chainsaw, it is inevitable that other outlaw nations, Russia and Iran , would see opportunity in the mayhem .

The 47th US president is too infantile and misled by a messianic government in Israel to comprehend that the citizens of Iran will not rise against their oppressors in Tehran under the Stars and Stripes and that Moscow will never be America ’s friend.

But Iran’s supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei (along with his Guardian Council), the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin are locking America into another forever war.

Oil prices edged lower on Thursday as investors weighed the uncertainty of renewed military strikes between the US and Iran that ​risk disrupting supplies from the Middle East.