IRGC spokesman Mohebi lists conditions to end conflict with US

Iranian Guards List Demands To End US Conflict

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) spokesman Hossein Mohebi on Wednesday listed conditions for ending the war with the United States, according to the Fars news agency.

He demanded that Washington halt all military action, make no new threats, pull Israeli troops from Lebanon, and lift Yemen's blockade. Mohebi also insisted America release twenty-four billion dollars in frozen Iranian assets and stop interfering with Tehran's nuclear and missile programs.

He warned that additional American strikes against Iranian targets would bring a much larger retaliatory response from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Citing Mohebi, Fars reported that Iran would attack twenty targets if two or three of its own sites were struck.

The IRGC also announced plans to create a new prohibited maritime zone extending outward from the eastern Strait of Hormuz. The area will stretch roughly from Chabahar across portions of the Gulf of Oman into the Arabian Sea, Mohebi said.

US Strikes Iranian Tankers As Fighting Resumes

Iran and America have resumed direct strikes this week after a period of relative calm that lasted through most of August. The conflict began in late February when Washington and Israel launched attacks on Tehran, and oil prices have since soared.

US Central Command said its forces destroyed five Iranian oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and near Kharg Island because the IRGC twice targeted an American warship.

After American strikes destroyed five tankers, the IRGC fired ballistic missiles at the US Al-Azraq base in Jordan on Wednesday morning. Jordan's armed forces said its air defenses intercepted eighteen of twenty incoming missiles and that two fell without causing casualties.

Oil prices climbed above one hundred dollars a barrel in early Asian trading as markets reacted to the new hostilities. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the campaign, saying Iran would lose tankers whenever it targeted American naval ships.

Iran Condemns Losses While Regional Risks Rise

Iran's Foreign Ministry condemned the American strikes on its commercial oil tankers as a violation of the United Nations charter and a war crime on Wednesday.

Iran's military chief of staff warned that strikes on Iranian tankers would trigger attacks on American installations throughout the region. The IRGC claimed to have captured an American underwater drone near the Strait of Hormuz, but the Pentagon said it malfunctioned.

US officials said Washington will keep striking targets around the Strait of Hormuz, escort merchant vessels through the waterway, and maintain a blockade of Iranian ports.

Analysts said neither Washington nor Tehran wants a return to all-out war, but a single miscalculation could ignite a larger conflict. The six-month war has already closed the Strait of Hormuz to normal traffic and sent global oil prices sharply climbing.

Earlier on Wednesday, Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels attacked four Saudi Arabian cities, wounding more than seventy people and setting oil installations ablaze, according to Saudi officials.