DUBAI — Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Thursday they launched an attack targeting an American air base they say was the source of US strikes targeting an Iranian drone operation near the Strait of Hormuz hours earlier.The fresh exchange of fire came hours after US President Donald Trump rejected a report he was close to a compromise deal with Tehran.It was the second time in three days that the US has attacked targets in Iran saying that the strikes were cond-ucted in self defense.The US Central Command confirmed a previous round of "self-defense" strikes on southern Iran on Monday in which they targeted Iranian missile sites and boats attempting to lay mines in the Strait, where thousands of commercial tanker ships are stranded as a result of the conflict.It said those strikes were designed "to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces".Iran condemned the strikes as "a grave violation of the ceasefire" and vowed that the Iranian government "will not leave any act of hostility unanswered."The latest escalation in hostilities highlighted threats to a fragile ceasefire that took effect in early April, and protracted negotiations to end the three-month war that has choked traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and shot up global energy prices.Centcom said the American military shot down four Iranian attack drones and struck a ground control station in the port city of Bandar Abbas that was about to launch a fifth drone.“These actions were measured, purely defensive and intended to maintain the ceasefire,” it added.The IRGC said it targeted a US base in response to what it described as an early morning ‌US attack near Bandar ‌Abbas airport, Tasnim news agency reported on Thursday. The IRGC said they targeted the US air base from which ‌the attack ⁠on the control ⁠station near Bandar Abbas was launched.Kuwait, which hosts a large US base, said it was responding to missile and drone attacks without saying where the attacks were coming from.Israel, which has been fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, also reported sounding sirens regarding hostile aircraft activity in northern Israel.Oil prices, having fallen more than 5 percent on Wednesday, rebounded after reports of the escalation in hostilities. US crude futures gained more than 3 percent, while stocks fell and the dollar rose.The war has killed thousands and sent global energy prices sharply higher since it began on February 28 with US and Israeli strikes. Trump has repeatedly said that a deal is close at hand.At a cabinet meeting attended by media on ⁠Wednesday, Trump dismissed an Iranian state TV report that it had obtained an unofficial draft of an ‌agreement to restore commercial shipping through the strait to prewar levels within a month, with ‌Iran and Oman jointly managing traffic.Trump said no single country would have control over the waterway, and appeared to threaten Oman, a country with which the US ‌has decades-long military and economic ties.“Nobody’s going to control (the strait),” Trump said. “It’s international waters and Oman will behave just like everybody else ‌or we’ll have to blow them up. They understand that, they’ll be fine.”Trump added that he was not yet satisfied on a deal with Iran and the US was not discussing easing sanctions on the country.The Iranian TV report of a framework deal said the United States would also lift its ‌blockade of Iranian ports and withdraw military forces from Iran’s vicinity.Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, said Trump’s “rhetoric” would not force Iran to back away from its demands to ⁠enrich uranium, wield authority over the strait ⁠and see sanctions against it lifted.“It is obvious Trump, seeking a way out of this strategic deadlock, alternates between issuing threats and appealing for an agreement,” Azizi said in a post on X. The strait, which handled a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas traffic before the war, the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear capacity and ongoing sanctions are the sticking points in talks seeking to end the three-month conflict.The waterway is covered by international law that guarantees foreign vessels the right to pass through.The US Treasury Department added the Arabian Gulf Strait Authority, the Iranian body set up to manage passage through the strait, to a list of sanctioned people and entities seen as posing threats to US national security.Iranian state TV said the draft deal would also have the US withdraw military forces from the immediate vicinity, though it said the issue of US troops in the region needed further discussion. The White House dismissed the report as a “complete fabrication.” Tehran did not comment.The Iranian report on the draft agreement did not mention Iran’s nuclear program, which the US wants disbanded. Iranian sources have said talks on the nuclear issue will come in a second round of negotiations — something that may not be acceptable to some of Trump’s closest supporters. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.