Oil prices soar, U.S. insists Strait of Hormuz open despite ongoing attacks

President Trump is set to attend a dignified transfer Wednesday for some of the U.S. service members who were killed in Iranian strikes in recent days.

The transfer is scheduled for 11 a.m. at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, according to the president's schedule.

It's not clear which service members will be part of Wednesday's dignified transfer. Three American soldiers were killed in an Iranian attack on their base in Jordan over the weekend, including one who was previously believed to be missing. One American soldier was killed during the controlled detonation of an Iranian drone in Iraq.

Oil prices jumped around 4% Wednesday, with international benchmark Brent Crude trading briefly over $95 a barrel – a $20 rise since the U.S. and Iran resumed fighting on July 7.

Shippers remain reluctant to transit the Strait of Hormuz, despite U.S. Central Command insisting again Tuesday night that it "remains open."

Iran has continued to attack vessels in the waterway, as well as U.S. allies across the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in the Middle East. 

An Iranian national flag flies above the new Phase 3 facility at the Persian Gulf Star Co. gas condensate refinery in Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2019.  Ali Mohammadi / Bloomberg via Getty Images

President Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. was "not finished" attacking Iran. The 11th straight night of strikes saw the U.S. target "military logistics infrastructure," according to the Pentagon, while Iranian state media reported strikes around the country.

Mr. Trump also said he would "take care of" Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels if they carry out threats to block access to Saudi Arabia's Red Sea ports via the Bab el-Mandeb strait, something which – if fully realized – could deal the global economy another blow.

"Our view is that we'll be ... in this $80-to-$90 range, depending on the news flow," Jay Hatfield at Infrastructure Capital Management told Bloomberg about oil prices. "If we actually have a closed Red Sea, that's a threat. We haven't seen that yet. That could shoot us over $100."

The Houthis have previously tried to cut off shipping through the Red Sea, leveraging the Bab al-Mandeb as a chokepoint. The strait, at the southern end of the Red Sea, is the only route in or out of the body of water apart from the Suez Canal in the north, which offers a much longer, and thus costlier route to the energy markets of Asia via the Mediterranean.

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The Strait of Hormuz "belongs to us," an Iranian official said Wednesday, adding that those who fail to understand Iran's hold on the waterway would "end up at the bottom."

"We will not seek an alternative route to the Strait of Hormuz because this strait is the heart of Iran," Ali Zeynivand, a spokesperson for Iran's Ministry of Interior, said Wednesday in remarks carried by the official state news agency IRNA.

"The Strait of Hormuz belongs to us," he said, and anyone who fails "to properly study Iran's continuous civilization … will disappear, and only their remains may end up at the bottom of the Strait of Hormuz."

Beirut is working toward a "complete Israeli withdrawal" from areas it occupies, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said on Wednesday during a visit to a village where Lebanon's army recently deployed.

"We will continue mobilizing our political and diplomatic efforts to secure a complete Israeli withdrawal from the south," he said in Zawtar al-Gharbiya, one of several "pilot zones" intended to demonstrate that the Lebanese army can remove and disarm Iran-backed Hezbollah as part of a Washington-sponsored deal with Israel.

Lebanon and Israel have been engaging in direct talks sponsored by the U.S.

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The U.S. military's Central Command said it completed an 11th consecutive night of strikes on Iran at about 8:15 p.m. ET on Tuesday, insisting that the Strait of Hormuz "remains open."

The latest round of strikes on Iranian assets lasted just over an hour. CENTCOM said in a social media post that it hit aircraft hangars, drone storage and operations centers "to further degrade Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz."

"Over the past three months, Iran has attacked more than 30 commercial vessels transiting the international waterway vital for regional and global trade," CENTCOM said. "The unwarranted attacks have endangered hundreds of innocent mariners and undermined freedom of navigation."

Despite those attacks, which continued Tuesday, however, CENTCOM concluded: "The Strait of Hormuz remains open for commercial vessel transit."

The Pentagon on Tuesday identified a third soldier who is believed to have been killed by Iranian strikes on a Jordanian air base.

The soldier — who was previously assessed as missing — was 28-year-old active-duty Army Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad of Ozone Park, New York, the Defense Department said in a statement.

"The Soldier status was updated to a Duty Status–Whereabouts Unknown and is believed to be deceased," the military said in its statement.

Rampersad was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 57th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 52nd Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 10th Army Air Missile Defense Command, in Ansbach, Germany, the Pentagon said.

Eighteen American service members are believed to have been killed since the start of the Iran war, including four U.S. soldiers in recent days — three in an Iranian attack on Jordan and one during a controlled demolition of an Iranian drone in Iraq.

Two Democratic sources and a third source familiar with the matter told CBS News the actual cost of the Iran war is much higher than the $37.5 billion estimate offered Tuesday by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

This is in part because the current estimate does not include costs like military construction for U.S. bases that have been damaged.

Hegseth said the war has cost around $37.5 billion during questioning by Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois in a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. He said it reflects the expected cost of certain expenses that will be incurred through the end of the fiscal year, like troop pay.