Iran and US hit tankers in biggest wave of attacks on shipping since war began

By Enas Alashray, Idrees Ali and Jana Choukeir

CAIRO/WASHINGTON/DUBAI, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Iran said on Wednesday it had attacked 10 ships near the Strait of Hormuz after the U.S. sank five Iranian oil tankers, in the biggest wave of attacks on shipping by both sides since the start of thesix-month-old war.

The attacks sent the price of oil surging, with benchmark Brent crudefutures breaching $100 a barrel for the first time since July. At least one seafarer aboard a tanker was reported killed and another listed as missing.

The incidents follow a month of relative calm, during which theU.S. has sought to pressure Iran through economic means.

Iran said it had fired ballistic missiles at a U.S. military base in Jordan. Jordan said it intercepted 18 missiles, with the remaining two falling harmlessly in unpopulated areas. AU.S. official said all American troops were accounted for.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps said it would sharply escalate its response to any further attacks, and said Iranwould soon release maps of a new, enlarged off-limits zone at sea that would extend as far as Chabahar on the coast near Pakistan.

President Donald Trump said Tehran was trying to influence the November U.S. midterm elections, which will determine whether his Republican Party retains control of Congress.

"I think war is going to end immediately after the election because they can't hold out any longer. They're desperate to try and affect the election," he told reporters.

The Wall Street Journal reported later on Wednesday that top White House advisers, including Vice PresidentJD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have privately warned Trump that the conflict could extend through the remainder of his presidency, which ends in January 2029. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

In recent days there has also been an escalation in fighting between Saudi Arabia and theHouthis in Yemen, a second theater of war that threatens global energy supplies from the Middle East.

VIDEO SHOWS IRANIAN TANKERS ABLAZE

The American military said it destroyed five Iranian oil tankers overnight, releasing video of ships ablaze before they sank. TheCentral Command called its attacks a response to the Revolutionary Guard targeting aU.S. Navy warship twice with ballistic missiles. No Americans were harmed, theU.S. said.

Washington has announced a new policy of attacking Iranian tankers in retaliation for fire that threatens its warships, and says it has hit 10 so far over the past week.

"Iran continues to try to hitU.S. naval ships, and for every time they do that or try to do that, they're going to lose tankers," Rubio told reporters during a visit to Colombia.

Iran said it fired on two U.S. ships and eight tankers in response.

One seafarer was killed aboard the oil products tanker Hercules Star while at anchorage off Dubai and another crew member was missing, the vessel's charterer, Peninsula, said.

The British maritime security agency UKMTO described a vessel in the vicinity that was listing after being struck by a projectile. Reuters could not immediately determine whether this referred to the same ship.

Two Iraqi port officials said a tanker carrying 2 million barrels of fuel oil, the New Andros, had caught fire after being struck by a drone in Iraqi waters. There were no reports of casualties among the 22 crew.

The UKMTO said it had received reports of several merchant ships struck by disabling fire in the northern Gulf and Gulf of Oman, on either side of the Strait of Hormuz.

A maritime security source reported a liquefied natural gas tanker was damaged in the Emirati port of Khor Fakkan.

An explosion was heard in the southern part of the Iranian port city ofJask, coming from the sea, Iran's Fars news agency reported late on Wednesday. It said no details were available on the source or cause of the blast.

STRAIT CHOKED OFF

In recent weeks Washington had boasted of increasing success guiding tankers through the strait, which carried a fifth of oil supplies before the war. But any such gradual reopening appears to have been set back by a resumption of fighting this month.

Claudio Galimberti, chief economist at consultancy Rystad Energy, said flows through Hormuz had fallen as low as 2 million barrels per day, having reached as high as 8 million to 9 million bpd in the week before fighting resumed on August 30.

Even more severe than the rise in crude prices has been a surge in the cost of the fuels refined from it. The average retail price ofU.S. diesel hit a fresh all-time high on Wednesday above $5.94 a gallon.

(Reporting by Elwely Elwelly, Jana Choukeir and Nayera Abdallah in Dubai and Enas Alashray in Cairo, and Idrees Ali, Simon Lewis and Steve Holland in Washington; Writing by Peter Graff, Gareth Jones and David Morgan; Editing by Andy Sullivan, Alex Richardson, Sharon Singleton, Alexander Smith, Nia Williams and Cynthia Osterman)