The New York Times reports:

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said on Tuesday that it would launch a “decisive reciprocal response” to any attack that violated the cease-fire, injecting more uncertainty into fragile diplomatic efforts a day after the U.S. military struck targets in southern Iran.

Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, also suggested that the country could renew strikes on U.S. military installations in the Persian Gulf, which Tehran had repeatedly targeted after the United States and Israel started bombing Iran in late February.

“The hands of time do not turn backward, and the nations and lands of the region will no longer serve as shields for American bases,” Mr. Khamenei wrote in a statement released to commemorate the start of the hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

The Iranian warnings came after U.S. forces struck missile launch sites in southern Iran and destroyed two Revolutionary Guard speedboats that U.S. officials said were trying to place mines in the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf waterway that is a critical transit route for crude oil and natural gas.

Two American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said that in the 24 hours preceding the U.S. strikes, Iran had launched attack drones near some of the nearly two dozen U.S. Navy warships in or around the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The ships are enforcing a blockade on vessels trying to enter or leave Iranian ports.

U.S. Central Command called the attacks on Monday “self-defense strikes” intended to “protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.”

The renewed hostilities — along with intensifying Israeli strikes against Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia in Lebanon — have threatened to upend the push for a diplomatic agreement to end the conflict and reopen the Strait of Hormuz to commercial ship traffic. [Continue reading…]