Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a massive Iranian attack on global shipping, Israel punishing the United Kingdom over its trade restrictions, and Europe’s fractured space strategy.

Tehran claimed on Wednesday to have carried out its largest known wave of attacks on shipping since the start of the Iran war. Such assaults put the Strait of Hormuz under growing pressure, skyrocketing global crude prices and suggesting that recent efforts to gradually reopen the strategic waterway are at an impasse.

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a massive Iranian attack on global shipping, Israel punishing the United Kingdom over its trade restrictions, and Europe’s fractured space strategy.

Tehran claimed on Wednesday to have carried out its largest known wave of attacks on shipping since the start of the Iran war. Such assaults put the Strait of Hormuz under growing pressure, skyrocketing global crude prices and suggesting that recent efforts to gradually reopen the strategic waterway are at an impasse.

On Tuesday, U.S. Central Command (Centcom) claimed to have destroyed five Iranian oil carriers in the Gulf of Oman and near Iran’s Kharg Island, the latter of which hosts Tehran’s main oil export terminal. “Iran has used the tankers as part of a multibillion-dollar shadow network that funds the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and its regional proxies,” Centcom said in a statement.

The United States said that Tuesday’s strikes were retaliation for two failed IRGC ballistic missile attacks on a U.S. Navy warship. “Iran continues to try to hit U.S. naval ships, and for every time they do that or try to do that, they’re going to lose tankers,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday.

In response, Iran said that it had attacked 10 ships—two U.S. ships and eight oil vessels—near the Strait of Hormuz as well as fired ballistic missiles at a military base used by U.S. forces in Jordan. At least one individual on the Gibraltar-flagged Hercules Star was killed, and several other ships reported fires onboard.

U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal that Iran has launched ballistic missiles at U.S.........

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