Tehran threatens to halt all Mideast energy exports after US reimposes
its blockade on Iran
[July 15, 2026]
By JON GAMBRELL
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The U.S. military reimposed a naval
blockade on Iran and intensified its airstrike campaign early Wednesday,
hitting an Iranian army barracks and killing at least seven troops while
wounding 260 people across the country, Iranian officials said.
Days of retaliatory strikes across the Middle East by Iran and the U.S.,
and both nations’ attempts to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz,
threaten to push the region back to all-out war.
More than 30 people have been killed over “recent days,” Iranian
government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said, without elaborating.
Seven of the dead came from the attack on the barracks in Iran's
southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan province.
The U.S. first imposed the blockade in mid-April and then lifted it in
mid-June, a day after signing the interim deal that set a 60-day period
for negotiations over issues like Iran’s nuclear program, but talks have
stalled as fighting over the strait, through which a fifth of the
world’s oil and natural gas trade passes during peacetime, has
intensified.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard threatened Wednesday to halt all
energy exports from the Middle East over the blockade.
“The export of oil and gas from the region will be either for everyone
or for no one,” it said.
When U.S. President Donald Trump announced the return of the blockade
Monday, he also said he would impose a 20% fee on ships passing through
the strait. But he dropped the plan to collect fees hours before
resuming the blockade, citing requests from allies in the Persian Gulf.
Both US and Iran launched attacks as blockade reimposed
The U.S. carried out another wave of strikes as it reimposed the
blockade, striking dozens of targets over seven hours, the U.S.
military’s Central Command said Wednesday.
Hossein Kermanpour, a spokesperson for the Health Ministry, gave
Wednesday's casualty figure of over 260 people wounded, without
specifying how many people had been killed. Kermanpour's figures
reported far more people injured than in any other round of recent
violence between Iran and the U.S.
One strike targeted a barracks for Iran's 388th Mechanized Infantry
Brigade in Bampour in Sistan and Baluchestan province, Iranian state
television reported. The report said the Americans fired at least 13
missiles in the attack and that the dead included conscripts and career
soldiers. A number of other troops were wounded.
The army said it would make “a decisive response to this aggressive
action by the American enemy,” state TV added.
The 388th operates battle tanks and armored vehicles.
Missile alert warnings went out in Bahrain and Kuwait early Wednesday
morning as they faced incoming Iranian fire, something that’s been a
daily occurrence, further straining a ceasefire in the war. Jordan also
said it shot down three incoming Iranian missiles. Iran claimed attacks
on the three nations.
U.S. Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads Central Command, said in a
statement that Iran had launched dozens of missiles and drones at
neighboring Gulf Arab countries.
“U.S. forces are holding Iran accountable for unwarranted aggression
that continues to endanger innocent lives,” Cooper said.
When the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran
effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz by attacking and threatening
ships. That sent the price of oil, fertilizer and other goods soaring.
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Three boys play in the shallow waters of the Strait of Hormuz, as a
plume of smoke rises from an explosion in the background, off Bandar
Abbas, Iran, Monday, July 13, 2026. (Razieh Poudat/ISNA via AP)
Iran has more recently attacked ships moving through the strait on a
route near Oman overseen by the U.S. military that is outside
Tehran’s control, setting off the recent violence. The U.S. has
threatened to reopen the strait by force — but experts say that
would require a much bigger armada if not tens of thousands of
ground troops.
Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani,
criticized America’s ongoing attacks targeting his country.
“The U.S. is the aggressor, not the victim,” he wrote to the world
body’s leader, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
Trump says he’s seeking Gulf investments instead of fees
Trump said Tuesday that he was called by the region’s “kings and
emirs,” who suggested an alternate arrangement to charging ships
fees to pass through the strait like the president proposed a day
earlier.
“They said we’d love to do it a different way. We’d love to invest
in the United States with billions and billions of dollars,” Trump
told reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office.
Trump said he preferred that arrangement to charging tolls “because
I don’t think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the
strait.”
It was unclear if the investment deals would be new commitments
relative to what Trump announced after a visit last year to the
Middle East.
Trump’s plan to charge fees would have been a change to longstanding
American policy and a departure from U.S. promises that the strait
would remain open to all without tolls.
Trump told Fox News Channel on Tuesday night that more U.S. strikes
against Iran were coming over the next two days and that bridges and
power plants could be targets by next week unless negotiations
resume. Already, the U.S. has struck at least one bridge.
“You better make a deal, or you’re not going to have anything left,”
Trump warned.
The interim peace deal is in peril
Under the interim deal, Iran agreed that passage through the strait
would remain free of charge for 60 days — but the agreement left
open what would happen after. Iran asserts it has the right to
manage traffic and potentially charge fees. The U.S. has disputed
that.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international
standard, briefly topped $87 early Tuesday, still well below the
nearly $120 reached at the height of the war. The price dipped to
$78 in the aftermath of Trump’s announcement that he had changed
course, then went back up to $85 a barrel on Wednesday.
Regional mediators meanwhile are still trying to get the United
States and Iran back to the negotiating table.
___
Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed
to this report.
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