By Humeyra Pamuk, Gram Slattery and Tala Ramadan
ANKARA/DUBAI, July 8 (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Wednesday that it was launching fresh strikes on Iran aimed at keeping the critical Strait of Hormuz open to traffic, hours after President Donald Trump declared that an interim agreement to end the war with Iran was "over."
The latest round of attacks, which the United States said was launched in response to Tuesday's assault on three cargo ships transiting the strait, rattled several cities along Iran's southern coast and left some areas without power.
"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."
Control of the strait, through which a fifth of global oil supplies pass, 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 create leverage as it negotiates a long-term deal with the U.S.
The latest escalation dented hopes of turning a memorandum of understanding signed on June 17 into a permanent peace deal to end the war, which began with U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran on February 28. Iran said on Wednesday it had attacked U.S. military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait in response to earlier U.S. strikes.
Asked before a NATO summit in Turkey 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.
Iran's state news agency reported sounds of explosions in several areas on Iran's southern coast on the Gulf, including at the port of Bandar Abbas, and in the cities of Chabahar and Konarak, and that electricity had been cut off in parts of Chabahar.
Nournews, affiliated with Iran's top security body, cited an Iranian military source as saying that Iran was planning to soon launch a "massive attack" on U.S. Army bases in the region in retaliation.
(Reporting by Reuters team in Tehran and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Stephen Coates and Timothy Heritage; Editing by Alex Richardson and Sanjeev Miglani)
