US launches new strikes on Iran and Tehran hits back in widening conflict

WASHINGTON/DUBAI, Sept 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. launched a barrage of airstrikes against Iran on Tuesday, prompting Iranian retaliation, in the most serious escalation in weeks in a conflict that has driven up global energy prices and weighed on President Donald Trump's popularity at home.

The strikes followed a weekend exchange of fire — the first since July — and attacks on Monday on two tankers leaving the Strait of Hormuz , the global oil supply waterway that Iran has effectively closed to shipping. Global oil prices rose more than $4 a barrel on Tuesday, settling at a five-week high.

Tehran struck back at U.S. assets in Jordan, Bahrain and Iraq and remained defiant, warning that it would prevent oil being exported from the Gulf, despite a threat by Trump to hit Iran "hard" and a warning from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that Washington was about to impose new sanctions.

Five people were killed and 50 wounded at a wedding near Sirik, a coastal area on the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranian Red Crescent reported. The Mehr news agency said a 4-year-old child was among those killed, while the IRNA news agency, citing a provincial official, put the number of wounded at 68.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement the U.S. attacks would "tighten the lock" on the Strait of Hormuz, which carried one of every five barrels of the world's oil before the war.

"If the enemy wants us not to export oil from the Persian Gulf, no one will be able to export oil," Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

Neither threats of strikes nor new economic sanctions appear to have materially changed the position of Tehran, which has been under heavy economic sanctions for half a century.

The U.S. strikes followed a month of relative calm in which the U.S. and Iran mostly held their fire while exchanging hostile statements.

The U.S. military's Central Command said it had completed a wave of strikes against IRGC targets on Tuesday including air defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets and facilities, mine-laying capabilities, and communications sites.

Iranian media reported multiple strikes, including a U.S. missile attack near the city of Ahvaz and at the civilian Jiroft airport in southeastern Iran, while explosions were heard in the southeastern port of Chabahar, the port city of Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz, and in Asaluyeh, a critical gas hub on the Gulf coast.

Iran's state broadcaster also reported explosions on Iran's Qeshm Island, on the northern side of the strait.

Trump warned Iran against responding to Tuesday's assault, threatening to strike again "at a much harder and higher level."

"But it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings and, when it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran!" Trump said in a social media post.

Even so, the IRGC said it fired back with a heavy ballistic missile attack on a base in Jordan and "killed a large number of U.S. forces."