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Iran says coastal attack will lead to full Gulf closure and mine-laying

An attack on Iran's southern coast and islands will lead to Gulf routes being cut with the laying of sea mines, the country's Defence Council said on Monday, according to state media. The US is considering plans to occupy or blockade Iran's Kharg Island, the country's main oil export hub, to pressure Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping, according to Axios. "Any attempt to attack Iran's coasts or islands will cause all access routes in the Gulf (...) to be mined with various types of sea mines, including floating mines that can be released from the coast," the statement read. "In this case, the entire Gulf will practically be in a situation similar to the Strait of Hormuz for a long time (...) One should not forget the failure of more than 100 minesweepers in the 1980s in removing a few sea mines." The Defence Council recalled that non-belligerent states can only pass through the Strait of Hormuz by coordinating passage with Iran...
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Five rockets fired from Iraq towards US military base in Syria

At least five rockets were launched from Iraq's town of Zummar towards a US military base in northeastern Syria on Sunday, two Iraqi security sources and a US official told Reuters. The attack against US forces is the first since early February when Iranian-backed groups in Iraq stopped their attacks against US troops. It comes a day after Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani returned from a visit to the United States, where he met with President Joe Biden at the White House. A post on a Telegram group affiliated with Kataib Hezbollah said armed factions in Iraq had decided to resume attacks after a near-three month pause after seeing little progress on talks to end the US-led military coalition in the country. Another popular Telegram group close to Kataib Hezbollah, Sabreen News, later said there had been no official statement by the Iran-backed faction. A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said more than five rockets were fired from Iraq towards troops at a coalition base in Rumalyn, Syria, but no US personnel were injured. The official referred to it as a "failed rocket attack," but it was not immediately clear if the rockets had failed to hit the base or been destroyed before they reached. It was also not clear if the base was the target itself. Following that, the official said, an aircraft from the US-led coalition in Iraq and Syria carried out a strike against the launcher. Two security sources and a senior army officer in Iraq said a small truck with a rocket launcher fixed on the back had been parked in Zummar, a town on the border with Syria. An army officer said the destroyed truck was seized for further investigation and initial investigation showed it was destroyed by an air strike. "We are communicating with the coalition forces in Iraq to share information on this attack," the officer added. The Iraqi Security Media Cell, an official body responsible for disseminating security information, said in a statement that Iraqi forces had launched "a wide-ranging search and inspection operation" targeting the perpetrators near the Syrian border, pledging to bring them to justice. The attacks came after a huge blast at a military base in Iraq early on Saturday killed a member of an Iraqi security force that includes Iran-backed groups. The force commander said it was an attack while the army said it was investigating and there were no warplanes in the sky at the time.

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