The U.S. military said on Wednesday it launched fresh strikes on Iran to keep the Strait of ‌Hormuz open to shipping, triggering Iranian attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain in the latest escalation to derail efforts to end the war.

The latest round of attacks, which the U.S. said was carried out in response to Tuesday’s assault on three cargo ships transiting the strait, came hours after President Donald Trump said he believed an interim ceasefire with Iran to be “over,” Reuters reported.

“U.S. Central Command forces have started conducting additional strikes against Iran to further degrade their ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz,” CENTCOM, the U.S. military’s Middle East ​command, wrote on X.

“The United States is holding Iran accountable for recent unjustified aggression against commercial shipping and civilian crews freely navigating a vital international waterway.”

The U.S. strikes rattled several cities along Iran’s southern coast ​and left some areas without power. Iran responded with a second day of attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain, both home to U.S. military bases.

Kuwait’s Defense Ministry said it ⁠was intercepting missiles and drones, while Qatar briefly issued an “elevated security threat” alert before later giving the all-clear.

The U.S. strikes against Iran on Wednesday will be greater in number than the ones carried out on Tuesday, a U.S. official ​told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“This is in retribution for yesterday’s bombing of ships by Iran. If it happens again, it will get much worse!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Control of the strait, through which a ​fifth of global oil supplies passed before the war, has given Tehran immense leverage, effectively allowing it to force a stalemate with the world’s most powerful military. While Iran has not claimed responsibility for the ship attacks, analysts say Tehran uses such actions to gain leverage in negotiations.

“The U.S. has yet to learn that bullying and breaking its commitments no longer come without a cost. Let me be clear: If you strike, you will be struck back,” Iran’s top negotiator, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, wrote on X.

“The Strait of ​Hormuz will be reopened only under Iranian arrangements, not through U.S. threats.”

The latest exchange of strikes appeared to dim hopes of turning a memorandum of understanding signed on June 17 into a permanent deal to end the war, which began with ​U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran on February 28.

Asked before a NATO summit in Turkey on Wednesday whether the memorandum of understanding was over, Trump said: “It’s a very interesting question. To me, I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them.”

“If we ‌make a ⁠deal with Iran I’m not sure that will stick,” Trump later said. “I found them to be very dishonourable people.”

But Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to escalate military action before backing off, said he did not expect a return to full-fledged war, and that it was not clear whether the negotiations on reaching a permanent deal would continue.

Also on Wednesday, Trump said he did not think the war would restart: “Anything that happens is going to be over very quickly … and will only make it safer, including for oil.”

Wednesday’s attacks pushed oil prices higher, with Brent crude futures rising about 1% to $78.80 a barrel by 0054 GMT. Even so, prices remained well below the late-April peak of more than $120 a barrel.

MAJOR IRAN PORT CITY ​HIT BY STRIKES

Iranian media reported strikes primarily along Iran’s ​southern coast, from the Strait of Hormuz to the ⁠Gulf of Oman.

Among the locations hit were Bandar Abbas, home to Iran’s largest port and key navy and Revolutionary Guards facilities on the Strait of Hormuz, as well as Konarak and Chabahar, neighbouring coastal cities near Iran’s border with Pakistan.

Electricity had been restored to most areas of Chabahar after strikes knocked out power for some in the ​city, Mehr news agency reported, citing the local utility. Media also reported that a maritime traffic control tower in Chabahar was hit.

A firefighter was killed in a ​strike on the airport in the ⁠southeastern city of Iranshahr, state media reported. In northern Iran, a U.S. attack hit a railway bridge near the town of Aqqala, according to Press TV.

Prior to the fresh U.S. attacks on Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei had said U.S. strikes had violated the memorandum by challenging a clause that “emphasizes the Islamic Republic of Iran’s responsibility in determining arrangements for the safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz”.

A spokesperson for parliament’s National Security Commission had said options for ⁠retaliation included withdrawing ​from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), changing Iran’s nuclear doctrine, and closing the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait at the mouth of the Red Sea, another crucial ​global shipping route.

In a letter to the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, Iran’s mission to the U.N. accused the United States of “blatant violation of the Charter of the United Nations and its international obligations” and said its attacks violated the memorandum of understanding signed by the ​two countries.

Tens of thousands of Iranians thronged a vast outdoor prayer complex in Tehran on Saturday to view the coffins of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader killed at the start of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, and his family.

Dressed ​in black and draped in the red, white and green flags of the Islamic Republic of Iran, mourners held up portraits of Khamenei and his son and successor, Mojtaba, Reuters reported.

In a show of ‌public devotion to the Islamic Republic’s theocratic state and revolutionary zeal, Iran is staging a week of mass funeral processions for the supreme leader killed in February by the opening airstrikes of the war.

After a day lying in state indoors for senior Iranian leaders and foreign officials to visit, Khamenei’s coffin was put on display under glass outdoors, along with those of his daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law and 14-month-old granddaughter.

There has still been no public sighting or image released of his son, the new leader, said to have been injured in the same ​attack.

Mourners filed into the vast courtyard of the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla, beating their chests, wailing and waving the banners of the Islamic Republic. Women dressed in black chadors wore white visors or held umbrellas ​to shield from the hot mid-morning sun.

“Let us wail!” a compere encouraged the crowds through a loudspeaker. Chants of “Death to America” echoed through the huge prayer hall.

BLOOD FEUD

“Everyone here ⁠has come to avenge the blood of their supreme leader,” Arash Rahimi, 40, told Reuters in the crowd. “As our leader has said, we have a blood feud with the United States. Our relations with the United States will ​never be good.”

The funeral is taking place at a critical moment for Iran, with its clerical rulers, backed by the military, buoyed from having survived the onslaught with their ruling system intact.

The war has been paused for a ceasefire ​under an agreement with Washington that Iran’s authorities say will ultimately bring huge economic benefits, in line with what they describe as a victory over a superpower.

The Axios news website quoted U.S. President Donald Trump as saying peace talks had been paused for a week for the events surrounding the funeral.

With Iran’s leaders all attending, Washington could take them all out with “one shot”, it quoted Trump as saying: “But we are not going to do that because then we would have nobody to negotiate with.”

Trump also told the news outlet that ​he was surprised to see some Iranians crying at the funeral, saying he thought people hated Khamenei. “Maybe it’s fake tears,” he said.

Iran’s embassy in Armenia reacted to Trump’s remarks in a post on X: “You don’t understand these things ​because you have neither civilization, nor history, nor honor.”

Within Iran, beyond the displays of solidarity with the leadership, it remains impossible to assess how deeply public loyalty runs across a country of 90 million people.

Weeks before the war, hundreds of thousands of ‌Iranians demonstrated against ⁠the government in protests that were put down in a violent crackdown in which thousands were killed. But there has been little or no public sign of such dissent since the U.S. and Israeli attacks began.

During the war, more than 3,000 people were killed including many of Iran’s most senior politicians and military commanders. Military bases and major infrastructure projects were destroyed causing billions of dollars in damage.

But Iran successfully struck U.S. bases in the region, inflicted pain on the Gulf Arab countries that host them, and asserted its control of the Strait of Hormuz, causing a spike in global energy prices which Trump said led him to push faster for peace.

The interim deal reached last month includes the ​unfreezing of billions of dollars in Iranian assets held ​abroad, and waivers from financial sanctions that had brought ⁠Iran’s economy to its knees.

SHI’ITE MARTYRDOM

In Iran’s theocratic system, Khamenei was not only head of state and leader of a revolutionary movement, but the earthly representative for Shi’ite Islam’s last imam, a holy figure who disappeared in the ninth century.

His death in an enemy attack plays into a long tradition of martyrdom and ritual mourning, dating to the ​seventh-century death in battle of the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson Hussein, which divided Islam into its Shi’ite and Sunni branches.

Burials are meant to be conducted within a day ​of death in Islam, but because ⁠of the risks of holding a big funeral during the war it was postponed until after last month’s interim truce deal was agreed.

Khamenei’s coffin was unveiled late on Thursday. On Friday it was laid in state in the great prayer hall built to honour his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, where it will remain until Sunday evening.

After what authorities are billing as a massive procession in central Tehran on Monday, the remains will be taken to the seminary city of Qom, the centre of ⁠Iran’s Shi’ite hierarchy, ​for ceremonies on Tuesday.

From there the body will be flown to Iraq for ceremonies in the two Shi’ite holy shrine cities of Najaf ​and Kerbala on Wednesday. The body will return to Iran on Thursday for another procession in Mashhad, to be buried near the tomb of another of the mediaeval Shi’ite imams.

Authorities plan to mobilise millions of people for big processions over the coming days, offering transport, food and lodging.