The United States and Iran have exchanged fresh missile and drone strikes, further jeopardising efforts by Washington to secure a new ceasefire agreement with Tehran. US forces fired a Hellfire missile to disable a tanker attempting to break through the American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, and later said they repelled Iranian reprisal attacks in the region and struck sites on Iran's Qeshm Island.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said it attacked the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain with missiles and drones in response to the strike on Qeshm, a claim the US military's Central Command (Centcom) denied. The latest exchange of strikes underlines the lack of political progress in resolving the Middle East crisis, despite upbeat claims by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
In his first appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran, Rubio reiterated on Tuesday that a deal with Tehran was within reach. He claimed the regime had agreed to negotiate aspects of its nuclear programme that it had refused to discuss even a month ago.
