President Trump told Fox News Wednesday the U.S. would "be hitting them hard" when asked about a response to new attacks by Iran targeting U.S. forces in the Mideast.
Jordan's military said it intercepted a new barrage of Iranian missiles Wednesday after the U.S. military said it thwarted a "surprise attack" by Iran targeting American forces in the region the previous day. At least 20 people were killed in joint U.S.-Saudi strikes on Iranian-backed forces in Iraq, an umbrella paramilitary group known as the Popular Mobilization Forces said Wednesday.
Central Command said U.S. and Saudi forces conducted strikes late Tuesday on Iranian proxies in Iraq, the first confirmed attacks by a Gulf state during the war. Drone strikes ignited fires Wednesday on two natural gas vessels at an Egyptian port, a maritime security firm said.
The attacks were on a U.S.-owned floating storage facility and a Greek-owned tanker at Damietta, according to Ambrey, a British maritime security firm. No injuries were reported from the fires, according to the Egyptian Petroleum Ministry, which gave no information on the cause. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the strikes.
Egypt, a close U.S. ally and regional mediator, is one of the countries in the Middle East to have been spared from direct military action during the war. A strike by Iran or its allies, if confirmed, would mark a significant widening of the conflict.
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/us-iran-war-trump-saudi-arabia-strait-of-hormuz/#post-update-7c81a62e link copied The Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that it is leaving its benchmark interest rate unchanged, a sign policymakers expect inflation to ebb despite higher energy costs due to the war in Iran. This marks the fifth consecutive time the central bank has kept interest rates in the target range of 3.5% to 3.75%. The last time Fed officials voted to change interest rates was in December 2025, when it reduced its key rate by 0.25 percentage points.
Yet while the Fed voted to stand pat, three of the Federal Open Market Committee's 12 voting members dissented from the decision. Such disagreement on the rate-setting panel is unusual, suggesting that some Fed officials are inclined to act now to extinguish inflation, according to Wall Street analysts. https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/us-iran-war-trump-saudi-arabia-strait-of-hormuz/#post-update-3d6d2402 link copied A British shipping firm reported an explosion Wednesday at an Egyptian commercial port on the Mediterranean Sea, near the mouth of the Suez Canal, which links Europe to the Red Sea and Saudi Arabia's major oil and gas port of Yanbu.
London-based Inchcape said in a statement that an explosion at Egypt's Damietta Port "specifically at the LNG [liquefied natural gas] terminal during cargo discharge operations," had caused a partial closure of the facility, though local authorities responded promptly to bring the situation under control. "The vessels involved have been safely relocated outside the port area," the company said, adding that port operations were expected to resume overnight "at other berths and terminals." Inchcape's main office told CBS News it could not provide any further information, and there was no immediate response from its Egypt office. Iran's Houthi allies in Yemen have attacked several ships in the Red Sea recently, after announcing a blockade of Saudi Arabia's Red Sea shipping operations.
The Ambrey Maritime Security company said Wednesday that at least one drone struck a U.S. LNG storage facility at Damietta, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility by Iran or the Houthis. If an attack is confirmed, it would be one of the first targeting energy infrastructure to extend beyond the immediate Persian Gulf and Red Sea regions into the Mediterranean since the war with Iran began five months ago.
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/us-iran-war-trump-saudi-arabia-strait-of-hormuz/#post-update-6d778559 link copied The U.S. government announced further sanctions against Iranian entities on Wednesday as part of efforts to cut off Iran's energy income and counter the Islamic Republic's efforts to exert control over commercial shipping and charge fees for use of the Strait of Hormuz. In a statement released by the State Department, spokesperson Tommy Pigott said the new sanctions imposed by the U.S.
Treasury targeted two Iranian insurance firms, the Persian Gulf Marine Insurance Company and Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority, which he said were backed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). He said the entities run schemes that extort international shipping by creating risk, "including the threat of vessel seizures — and then charge commercial vessels for coverage against dangers created by the regime itself, generating revenue that sustains IRGC operations and Iran's broader campaign of regional destabilization." The U.S. also designated eight companies on Wednesday that it said operated vessels "that have transported illicit Iranian crude oil and petrochemical products to China and the United Arab Emirates" as part of Iran's "shadow fleet" of tankers.
Pigott said the sanctions would support the U.S. Navy's "enforcement of a blockade on Iranian ports and coastline and add to a sustained campaign that has now sanctioned more than 100 vessels this year." https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/us-iran-war-trump-saudi-arabia-strait-of-hormuz/#post-update-36dce0b2 link copied Sabreen News, a media outlet linked to Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq that were targeted by joint U.S.-Saudi strikes on Tuesday, said Wednesday that several Iranian military advisers were among those killed in the attacks. The news outlet released a photo showing coffins wrapped in Iranian flags with a caption reading: "The martyred Iranian advisers who were killed by the fire of the Saudi Wahhabi-American enemy in Iraq at dawn today." Sabreen did not provide any further details on the identities of those killed, or the number of purported Iranian casualties from the strikes.
The timing of the strikes was also unclear, as the U.S. military announced the attacks late Tuesday night Eastern time, which could have been early morning Wednesday in the Middle East. The Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces, an alliance of Shiite militias in Iraq, said earlier Wednesday that at least 20 of its fighters were killed in the U.S.-Saudi strikes, which the Pentagon's Central Command said had targeted "terrorist logistics and weapons sites across eastern Iraq." https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/us-iran-war-trump-saudi-arabia-strait-of-hormuz/#post-update-bc6e9266 link copied Oil prices jumped again Wednesday, while the U.S.
stock markets fell ahead of a Federal Reserve decision on what to do with interest rates. The S&P 500 fell 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 614 points, or 1.2%, as of 10 a.m.
Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% lower. The action was stronger in the oil market, where the price of international benchmark Brent crude leaped 6.2% to $87.14 per barrel after fighting resumed in the war with Iran, raising concern about the global flow of oil. Iran launched a barrage of missiles at American forces in the Middle East, while the U.S.
military partnered with Saudi Arabia to strike Tehran-backed militias in Iraq. Brent oil's price had swung as low as $72 early this month and as high as $102 last week on uncertainty over whether the U.S. and Iran might reach a deal to allow oil tankers to move freely again through the Strait of Hormuz, from Middle East producers to customers worldwide.
The swings have raised worries that inflation will reaccelerate, just when it had begun to slow more than economists expected. That, in turn, has traders uncertain about what the Federal Reserve will announce after its two-day meeting on interest rates concludes later in the day. Traders are betting on a roughly 36% probability that the Fed will raise its...
