Iran said on Wednesday it fired a volley of cruise missiles at a US aircraft carrier, as strikes rained down across the Middle East despite back-channel diplomatic efforts to end the nearly four-week war. A conflict that began on February 28 with a US-Israeli bombing campaign on Iran has rapidly engulfed the entire region, sending oil prices skyrocketing and threatening to derail the global economy. Diplomats said they were working behind the scenes to ferry messages between the warring parties, despite contradictory public statements about whether talks were actually taking place. But there was no let-up in the military activity, with targets in Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and Saudi Arabia all coming under fire. Iran’s military said its cruise missiles at the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group had “forced it to change its position”, warning of “powerful strikes” when the “hostile fleet” comes into range.
The Sun