Pakistan is engaged with the US and Iran on talks to end their conflict and is positive that the countries "will return to the table for dialogue", Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said at a regular media briefing on Wednesday. Pakistan's Chief of Defense Forces Asim Munir's visit to Tehran last month created "considerable momentum" on the issue of the Strait of Hormuz, he said. Iran struck US interests around the Middle East on Wednesday, vowing "severe" consequences for renewed American attacks on the country. The latest fighting over the Strait of Hormuz once again expanded to US military bases in the region and drew Gulf countries deeper into the six-month conflict. US President Donald Trump had warned earlier of "much harder and higher" attacks if Iran retaliated to the US strikes which Iranian state media said had killed 11 people in the country's south and southwest. The latest round of conflict began when Washington hit Iranian targets on Sunday, the first known strikes in several weeks, after which Tehran's forces targeted US troops in Jordan, and projectiles struck two oil tankers in unclaimed attacks. More US strikes came on Tuesday, with Iranian state television reporting explosions in the country's south along the Hormuz strait and on an island in the Gulf, and that US forces hit an airport in the southern province of Kerman. After six months of war, the foes remain at an impasse, with Iran keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed and the United States persisting with a counter-blockade of Iranian ports. The Middle East war began in late February with US-Israeli attacks on Iran that killed its supreme leader Ali Khamenei. A fragile ceasefire between the United States and Iran collapsed after attacks on commercial ships in the Hormuz strait, through which one-fifth of world oil supplies flowed before the war.
