The U.S. intensified strikes against Iran overnight, hitting an oil tanker near the country’s main export terminal as shipping traffic slumped through the critical Strait of Hormuz.

The target, deep within the Persian Gulf, suggests Washington is widening the scope of the naval operation in parallel with continued attacks on Iranian military sites. Iran responded by firing at American bases in Kuwait and Jordan, with the Kuwaiti Armed Forces warning of explosions as a result of air-defense systems intercepting hostile targets.

Tehran seems in no mood to back down in the face of Donald Trump’s warning that he’ll escalate strikes — with the U.S. president citing Iranian power plants and bridges as potential targets — until the Islamic Republic reopens the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint for energy supplies that’s now the focal point of the war.

If the U.S. does target Iranian infrastructure, “everything that has remained intact so far due to Iran’s nobility will be smashed to pieces – that is, all the infrastructure in the region,” state-run Islamic Republic News Agency cited a spokesman for the country’s central military command as saying on Thursday.

Iran has asked its Houthi allies in Yemen to close the Red Sea oil route if the U.S. strikes Iran’s power network, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

“As long as the United States does not accept the Iranian legal system, this strait will remain closed,” a spokesman for Iran’s army said, according to a report from the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency. That was likely a reference to Tehran’s demand that ships seek its permission before sailing through Hormuz and abide by its rules, including the imposition of any service fees.

Observable commercial traffic through the strait was sparse, with transits largely limited to Iran-linked vessels using the northern route approved by Tehran, ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show. Even so, evidence continues to indicate that some oil cargoes are crossing without broadcasting their location.

Two supertankers carrying Saudi and Iraqi crude reappeared off Oman late Wednesday after going dark on tracking systems in the Persian Gulf over the weekend, indicating they likely completed the Hormuz passage earlier this week. Some Iranian tankers also changed their course after the U.S. resumed blockading its ships again this week.

The slowdown has pushed the seven-day moving average of crude oil flows, including Iranian supplies, through Wednesday down to about 5.5 million barrels a day, from around 9.4 million barrels a day the previous week, according to Bloomberg calculations based on vessel-tracking data and information from Kpler and Vortexa data.

The U.S. is increasingly frustrated with Iran’s willingness and ability to attack vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital transit for oil and liquefied natural gas supplies from the likes of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Qatar and Iran itself. Washington and Tehran accuse each other of breaching the terms of an interim peace agreement, which was meant to reopen the strait but worded ambiguously as to how fast that would happen.

Amid an uptick in tensions since early last week, the U.S. reimposed a blockade on Iranian ports and ended a waiver on oil sanctions. The blockade, which threatens to further weaken Iran’s strained economy, was first imposed in April and then lifted with the signing of the peace deal.

Iran’s rial has depreciated over the past month. The currency was trading at around 1.9 million versus the dollar on Thursday, roughly 20% lower than before the interim deal, according to Bonbast.com, a website that tracks its value on the black market.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance, in an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, described Washington’s approach as “a delicate diplomatic dance” combining economic pressure, military action and negotiations. He rejected the idea that talks with Iran are futile and said the U.S. wasn’t going to deploy ground troops to try and topple the government.

“We’re not going to send 150,000 ground troops in order to accomplish a change in a regime unless the people on the ground themselves want to accomplish that outcome,” he said, referring to Iranians.

Iran’s parliamentary speaker and chief negotiator in the now-stalled peace talks with the U.S., Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said his country had “no reason to remain committed” to an interim deal the two sides signed around a month ago. He stopped short, however, of saying Iran would formally withdraw from the so-called memorandum of understanding.

Early Thursday, the U.S. said it had struck a supertanker near Iran’s Kharg Island export terminal, its first attack on a vessel since the blockade restarted. The U.S. military said the Curacao-flagged “unladen” tanker ignored multiple warnings as it moved to an Iranian port.

“The ceasefire is over, with vessels under heavy Iranian fire,” RBC analysts including Helima Croft said in a note to clients. “We do not see Hormuz traffic returning to pre-war levels as long as shippers have to contend with the threat of mines, missiles, drones, and Tehran tolls.”

Brent crude oil was unchanged on Thursday and, at around $85 a barrel, is up 11% this week because of the renewed hostilities.

The latest wave of U.S. attacks has mostly singled out military sites in the south of the Islamic Republic such as radar, missile and drone facilities. The bombing campaign remains far less intense than during the height of the war in March and early April, when Tehran and other major cities were under constant fire.

Congressional Republicans are moving to increase war spending despite the political risks of supporting an unpopular campaign that has pushed up consumer prices, all before midterm elections in November.

The White House is advancing plans to extend a shipping waiver to ease movement of oil, fuel and fertilizer as supply disruptions threaten.

—With assistance from Eltaf Najafizada, Patrick Sykes, Vivien Ngo and Alex Longley.

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