WASHINGTON — The United States launched fresh airstrikes in Iran and revoked a waiver that allowed it to sell oil globally, further imperiling a peace agreement after a series of attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

The “powerful strikes” were meant to “impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway,” U.S. Central Command said in a statement on X.

Hours earlier, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it was barring new sales of Iranian oil after July 7. Gold slumped amid fears that elevated energy prices might prompt the U.S. Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.

Taken together, the American actions marked the most serious threat yet to the interim agreement signed between the two countries’ leaders on June 17. They also threatened to scuttle negotiations aimed at achieving a permanent peace within 60 days of that deal.

American forces concentrated on Iranian air defenses and weapons launchers in the attacks, according to a U.S. official. Iran’s Mehr News Agency reported explosions were heard near the strait.

West Texas Intermediate surged above $72 a barrel as news of the latest clashes became known. Oil’s rebound, after futures had plunged in the second quarter as regional tensions cooled, threatens a new wave of disruption for global energy markets. Global benchmark Brent oil prices touched a peak near $125 a barrel in late April, two months after the U.S. and Israel began the military campaign against Iran. Prices returned toward preconflict levels this month on growing signs of a recovery.

Both sides accused the other of violating the ceasefire. The U.S. blamed Iran for the strikes on commercial shippers in Hormuz over the last day — the most since the agreement went into effect.

Iran called the U.S. operation and the waiver revocation violations of the two sides’ agreement. Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi vowed “decisive actions” in response.

A U.S. official, speaking under condition of anonymity before the American strikes took place, said Iran would only get the benefits of its deal if it exhibited good behavior.

But the official added that negotiators continue to work in good faith toward a final accord, suggesting the U.S. wasn’t ready to abandon the peace process completely.

The end of attacks on commercial shipping and the previous 60-day waiver allowing Iranian oil sales were key elements of the memorandum of understanding that halted fighting between the U.S. and Iran.

That deal was meant to create space for more detailed negotiations on the fate of Iran’s nuclear program and the future of the strait.

Even so, the memorandum has held only tenuously. In late June, Iran struck a Singapore-flagged container ship in the strait, prompting the U.S. to retaliate and setting off a series of back-and-forth attacks.

And Tehran has repeatedly said it wouldn’t allow vessels to transit the waterway without its permission, though it denied any involvement in an attack on a Qatar-linked vessel. President Donald Trump had pushed for ships to pass freely through the strait as they had done before the U.S. and Israel began attacking Iran in late February.

Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group and a former White House official, said the waiver revocation “is a signal to a complacent market that the ceasefire may not be as durable and solid as thought. The market has some risk pricing to do.”

The spate of attacks is a reminder of the continued risks to ships crossing through Hormuz, even with military forces protecting vessels that choose to cross by a route near Oman’s coastline.

Iran has also sought to steer commercial ships toward its shores and keep them from using the Omani route, according to U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle.

He said Iran had laid mines in the strait as a way of channeling ships nearer to Iran. Their goal is to “force shipping into their side of the actual Strait of Hormuz,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg This Weekend, parts of which will be broadcast on Sunday.

“The Iranians are determined to show that they are in control of the Strait and that the only way to pass through safely is to take the northern route,” according to Claire McCleskey, cofounder of sanctions advisory firm Clarity Compliance Consulting and a former U.S. Treasury official.

The reversal in the U.S. stance occurred just as oil flows and production from the Persian Gulf were starting to approach pre-war levels. U.S. authorization for sales of Iranian oil played a significant role in calming investor worries about supply shortages and helped tame oil prices.

Now, a return to hostilities and renewed threat to energy flows via the critical strait could once again plunge the global market into renewed volatility.

Talks between the U.S. and Iran were suspended as Tehran began a funeral for the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the war in late February. Qatar said the next meeting would be scheduled as soon as possible after the ceremonies. Khamenei will be buried in his hometown of Mashhad on July 9.

A key question in the coming days will be whether the U.S. starts imposing fresh sanctions on Iran. That would be a further violation of the interim deal.

“It’s an expression of the administration’s frustration,” David Schenker, a U.S. official for the Middle East during Trump’s first term and fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said of the latest U.S. attacks.

“The expectation that Iran was going to comply was overly optimistic,” he said. “This is a war that is dragging on.”

_____

(With assistance from Devika Krishna Kumar, Tony Capaccio, John Harney and Romy Varghese.)