Escalating US-Iran strikes threaten interim peace agreement

A new round of escalating strikes between Iran and the US has continued, further undermining the fragile interim peace agreement between the two countries, and prompting Donald Trump to threaten violence that would ensure Iran “will no longer exist”. On Sunday, Tehran launched drone and missile attacks against Bahrain and Kuwait after new US strikes on sites in southern Iran and threatened a “complete halt” to negotiations to end the war. Trump said that a moment might come soon when he abandoned talks and the US would “militarily finish the job”. The US president posted on social media: “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!” Kuwait, which hosts a major US army base, said it had intercepted two ballistic missiles and there were no reports of injuries or damage; while Bahrain’s interior ministry said the Iranian strikes had damaged a residential building near the international airport and no one was killed. The latest violence has been triggered by efforts to reopen the strait of Hormuz to all shipping without Iran’s direct oversight. The strategically critical waterway, which carried a fifth of the world’s oil and liquid gas supplies before the war, has long been considered an international passageway. …