US sanctions PGSA after reported new strikes on Iran

THE US has sanctioned Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority after reportedly carrying out new strikes on an Iranian ground control station near the Strait of Hormuz, shaking the fragile peace talks between Washington and Tehran.

The US Treasury on Wednesday added the PGSA, a new Iranian agency tasked with regulating Hormuz transits, to its foreign assets control list, warning that anyone co-operating with it may ultimately be exposed to sanctions risk.

Iran’s latest attempt to “extort” global maritime trade shows that the US maximum campaign has left the regime “desperate for cash”, treasury secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

“We will remain relentless in our pursuit to constrict the network of vessels, intermediaries, and buyers through which Iran exports both its oil and malevolence,” Bessent added.

The new sanction came after US forces shot down four Iranian attack drones and struck a ground control station in the country’s port city of Bandar Abbas on the Middle East Gulf, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed US official who called the military actions “measured” and “purely defensive”.

In retaliation, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps said early Thursday that it has fired on an “American air base” responsible for the attacks on Bandar Abbas, without specifying where it was located.

The US “aggression will not go unanswered, and if it is repeated, our response will be more decisive”, IRGC said in a statement carried by its official media outlet Sepah News.

Meanwhile, Kuwait said that its air defence forces are currently confronting “hostile missile and drone attacks”, whose origins and targets it didn’t elaborate on. Kuwait, one of the closest US security allies in the Middle East, has been routinely targeted by Iran and its proxies since the start of the war.

The strikes on Bandar Abbas are the second such attacks by the US following its Monday military assaults targeted at Iranian missile sites and boats, putting the already shaky US-Iran peace talks under further strain.

On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump warned gulf ally state Oman not to side with Iran to share control over Hormuz, vowing that the strait will be “open to everyone”.

“It’s international waters and Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up,” Trump told reporters during a cabinet meeting. “They understand that. They’ll be fine.”

Trump said he doesn’t care about whether the stalled peace talks with Iran will affect the outcome of US midterm elections in November.

The US is “not satisfied” with the terms being negotiated with Iran, though Tehran was “very much intent” on a deal to end the war, Trump said.

Iran’s state TV said on Wednesday that an “initial unofficial framework for a memorandum of understanding” had been drafted, under which passage through the Hormuz will be restored to pre-war levels under Tehran’s management, concurrently with the US lifting the naval blockade.

Later, the White House called the report a “complete fabrication” and said, “nobody should believe what Iranian state media is putting out”.