The US does not intend to attack power plants or oil facilities, Vance says in Budapest, and says that civilian targets are not on the table until negotiations ahead of Donald Trump's deadline have run their course. Tuesday's attack is also not a change of course, he says.
I don't think the news from Kharg represents a shift in strategy or shows that the president has changed his mind.
At the same time, Israel says it has carried out a large-scale wave of attacks against infrastructure across Iran.
"We are crushing the terrorist regime in Iran with even more force and violence. Yesterday we destroyed transport planes and dozens of helicopters, today we have attacked railways and bridges used by the Revolutionary Guard," said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a videotaped speech.
Israel says it attacked ten targets, and Iranian media report attacks on, among other targets, a bridge outside Qom, a railway bridge in Kashan in central Iran, a railway in Karaj north of Tehran and a highway in the country's northwest.
Red line?
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, in turn, threatens to deprive the United States and its allies of access to oil for several years if Iran's "red lines" are crossed, AFP writes. According to the statement, Iran has until now "shown great restraint" in terms of which targets could be subject to retaliation - "but all these reservations have now been lifted."
The red lines are seen as applying to President Donald Trump's threat to attack civilian infrastructure.
Almost all Iranian oil exports pass through the small island of Kharg, a few miles off Iran's coast in the northern Persian Gulf, because it is the only place where the largest tankers can dock.
The US attacked Kharg in mid-March but stressed that no attacks were directed at oil facilities. Attacks on the island are believed to have consequences for the global energy market, and a more sustained intervention is considered difficult to carry out given the island's proximity to the coast.
Escalation
Qatar also warns the war is teetering on the brink of an uncontrollable escalation.
"Since 2023, we have been warning that an escalation allowed to continue will take us to a point where it is no longer controllable. And we are very close to that point," Majed al-Ansari, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Doha, told AFP.
