By Jonathan Saul

LONDON, July 9 (Reuters) - Oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was at a near standstill on Thursday, according to data and sources, as shipping risks escalated after the U.S. renewed airstrikes on Iran, triggering retaliation by Tehran in the Gulf.

Just two tankers had so far sailed through the strait in the early hours of Thursday. They included the crude supertanker Berg 1, which had loaded at Iran's Kharg Island and is subject to U.S. sanctions, according to analysis from Kpler.

AMSTERDAM, July 9 (Reuters) - Member states handed back Syria's voting rights at the global chemical weapons watchdog on Thursday, following what they described as "a significant change in circumstances" since the fall of the Assad regime.

Syria was stripped of its rights at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 2021, after its forces were found to have repeatedly used poison gas during the civil war.

BERLIN, July 9 (Reuters) - Germany will purchase Tomahawk cruise missiles from the United States and station them on German soil, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Thursday, in a shift from planned U.S. deployments to Germany's own long-range strike capability.

Merz told lawmakers he had sealed the deal with the U.S. government on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Ankara, adding that the meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday had exceeded his expectations.

By Andrew Gray and Lili Bayer

ANKARA, July 9 (Reuters) - NATO has weathered another storm from Donald Trump but European members of the military alliance are bracing for more turbulence ahead in relations with the U.S. president.

It says much about the state of U.S.-European ties when a NATO summit that began with a U.S. leader ordering a cutoff in trade with one member, Spain, and rebuking others was widely hailed as a success after he re-committed to the alliance hours later.

By Humeyra Pamuk, Gram Slattery and Tala Ramadan

ANKARA/DUBAI, July 8 (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Wednesday it launched fresh strikes on Iran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to shipping, triggering Iranian attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain in the latest escalation to derail efforts to end the war.

The latest round of attacks, which the U.S. said was carried out in response to Tuesday's assault on three cargo ships transiting the strait, came hours after President Donald Trump said he believed an interim ceasefire with Iran to be "over."

By Tuvan Gumrukcu, Huseyin Hayatsever and Jonathan Spicer

ANKARA, July 8 (Reuters) - Turkey put on a red-white-and-blue air show and named a new airport building after President Donald Trump, seeking to take its relationship with the U.S. to new heights at a NATO summit in Ankara, even as the U.S. leader lashed out at others in the defence alliance.

By Mike Stone, Gram Slattery and Humeyra Pamuk

WASHINGTON/ANKARA, July 8 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump unexpectedly left Turkey on Wednesday aboard an older Air Force One rather than the newly renovated Qatari-donated jet that brought him there, but later boarded the new plane in Britain for the flight to Washington.

The trip to Turkey for the NATO summit, the first international travel for the new plane, took place as hostilities escalated with Iran, a country that borders Turkey.

By Asif Shahzad and Mubasher Bukhari

ISLAMABAD, July 8 (Reuters) - Pakistani rescuers found the wreckage of a cargo plane in a deep-sea search operation on Wednesday, 12 hours after it went missing off the coast of Karachi, with efforts underway to find the five crew members who were on board, authorities said.

The wreckage of the K2 Airways Boeing 737 was recovered 53 nautical miles (98 km) south of Ormara port, the Pakistan Airports Authority said.

By Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON, July 8 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s struggle to extricate himself from the unpopular Iran war has hit a new roadblock with the latest exchange of attacks between the two sides, leaving him with few good options and a faltering ceasefire.

Trump declared that an interim agreement to end the conflict was "over" and ordered fresh strikes on Wednesday after Iran targeted U.S. military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait following the U.S. bombing of Iranian targets in response to attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.