AP News53%
US expands strikes into northern Iran and disables ship trying to run blockade 51%
By Jon Gambrell54%
7/15/2026, 8:41:44 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Pessimism Bias, Negativity Bias, and Slippery Slope, with Recency Bias as the most egregious example at 15.1% saturation with 81 hits. Analysis detected 1,076 faulty-reasoning hits from 536 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 50.7% and a BS Rank of 51% (10,786 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 50.70% of the article peer group.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United States intensified its strikes on Iran early Thursday, hitting targets farther north and firing into a ship the U.S. accused of trying to break its naval blockade on the Islamic Republic.
Iran retaliated by launching missiles and drones at U.S. allies in the region, and warned its attacks may escalate.
Days of back-and-forth strikes by the U.S. and Iran across the Middle East — and renewed threats to the Strait of Hormuz — have shredded the interim deal to end the Iran war and could tip the region back into all-out war.
Iranian officials say U.S. strikes have killed more than 35 people and wounded over 300 others.
For the first time in this latest round of violence, strikes also reached into areas around Iran’s capital, Tehran, showing a widening set of targets for the Americans.
When the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb.
28, Tehran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic, a move that sent the price of oil, fertilizer and many other goods soaring far beyond the region and gave Iran major leverage in negotiations.
Col.
Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesperson for the Iranian military’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, threatened that Iran could launch widespread attacks on regional infrastructure should Trump’s threat be carried out.
“All the infrastructure in the region will be crushed under the steel blows of the powerful armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran” should Trump’s threat be carried out, Zolfaghari said.
“Under no circumstances and in no way will we allow America, as a foreign and extraregional country, to interfere in the Strait of Hormuz,” he added.
“This is Iran’s invincible red line.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said it opened fire on the Curacao-flagged oil tanker Belma sailing toward Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal in the Persian Gulf.
After the ship “ignored multiple warnings,” a U.S. aircraft disabled the merchant vessel by firing a missile into the ship’s smokestack.
Another American strike Wednesday targeted a barracks for Iran’s 388th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, which operates tanks and armored vehicles, in Sistan and Baluchestan province, Iranian state television reported.
The report said Americans fired at least 13 missiles in the attack and the seven dead included conscripts and career soldiers.
A number of troops were wounded.
Iran retaliated Thursday morning with missile and drone attacks on Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait, authorities in those countries home to U.S. forces said.
There was no immediate acknowledgment of damage or casualties from the attacks.
Kuwait reported a new round of incoming fire on Thursday afternoon.
Trump separately said on social media that Tehran made a goodwill gesture by releasing an American citizen wrongly detained in Iran since 2024.
He didn’t release further details.
Human rights lawyer Jared Genser released a statement identifying the detainee as his client Dena Karari, a U.S.-Iranian citizen who runs a nonprofit and was charged with espionage.
Iran did not immediately acknowledge the release, and her case was not publicly known, as sometimes happens with detentions in the Islamic Republic.
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Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.
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