U.S. President Donald Trump said he will continue bombing Iran if it refuses to agree to an interim peace deal, following a second night of clashes between the countries’ forces.

Trump ordered multiple strikes as his frustration over the lack of progress in talks grows. He told Fox News the U.S. would attack on Thursday unless the Islamic Republic accepts an accord that’s meant to extend their increasingly tenuous ceasefire by two months and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran retaliated, like it did the night before, by firing on U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan. Kuwait briefly closed its airspace and Jordan said it intercepted 20 missiles. Bahrain reported one child was injured after shrapnel from missile interceptions fell on its capital Manama.

Three people were injured in Tehran, the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency said, citing the head of the capital’s emergency services.

Iran also said the Strait of Hormuz would be closed to all types of vessels, suggesting it would tighten its grip on a waterway through which only a small number of oil tankers and other vessels have got through since the start of the conflict in late February. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it hit two vessels trying to sail through the chokepoint early on Thursday. The incidents had not been confirmed and the U.S. said commercial ships continue to transit through.

Iran’s newly created Persian Gulf Strait Authority said vessels that had already received permission to transit the strait should “be patient and await further guidance.”

The U.S. and Iran have been in indirect negotiations since they started a ceasefire on April 8. Yet they’ve failed to reach an interim deal — to be followed by more complicated discussions about curbs to Tehran’s nuclear program — and their confrontation has intensified in the past week. For now, attacks have focused on military targets, signaling both sides are unwilling to escalate tensions beyond a measured range.

Despite the skirmishes, the indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran — with Qatar playing an increasingly important role as a mediator — are continuing and there's been progress this week, according to people familiar with the diplomacy.

Each side is using the exchanges of fire as a way to try to pressure the other and gain better terms in the negotiations, one of the people said.

Iran said attacks by the U.S. render the ceasefire “effectively meaningless,” in a statement from the foreign ministry published Thursday.

On Sunday night and into Monday, Israel and Iran launched missiles against each other. The U.S. then blamed Iran for downing an Apache helicopter near the Hormuz strait. The latter incident, which Iran hasn’t said it was responsible for, triggered Trump’s order of strikes in the past two days.

There are several sticking points between the warring sides. Those include Tehran’s insistence the U.S. unfreezes more than $10 billion of Iranian funds held in countries such as Qatar, and Trump demanding the Islamic Republic relinquishes or destroys its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium. Iran also wants a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Hezbollah, a key ally of Tehran.

Overnight, the U.S. targeted Iranian military sites, including air-defense installations, with around 50 Tomahawk missiles. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, described them as “self-defense strikes,” in a signal that Trump wants to avoid restarting a full-on war.

Trump said to Fox he has spoken to Iranian officials directly, telling them to stop bombing U.S. assets. He didn’t say who he spoke to in what would be a very rare instance of a U.S. president conversing directly with Iranian authorities.

The president has consistently said he wants to end a war that’s killed thousands of people across the Middle East, sent energy prices surging and is increasingly unpopular with Americans.

“Is the truce over? The answer: No,” wrote Bloomberg Economics analysts including Dina Esfandiary and Becca Wasser. “This is how both sides are trying to shape the ceasefire, and such bouts of fighting are a function of protracted war. Neither side wants a return to high-intensity war.”

Iran has been battered by the fighting, with its government saying the six weeks of conflict prior to the truce caused around $270 billion of damage. Many key leaders have been assassinated. Still, it says it’s prepared to return to all-out war and has shown it can still strike both Israel and neighboring Arab states.

Oil prices were down on Thursday, with Brent trading below $92 a barrel, well below its high of over $125 in late April. That’s down to factors such as weak demand in China, though it’s also a sign many energy traders expect Iran and the U.S. to agree a deal in the coming weeks.

Still, Trump doesn’t have much time if he wants to avoid a further jump in prices. Crude will rise to $150 if the strait remains shut by August, according to energy-market consultancy FGE NexantECA. Western governments are drawing down emergency petroleum stockpiles at a record pace to keep a lid on prices.

In recent weeks, some oil producers have found ways to export oil by making so-called dark transits. While conventional vessel-tracking data show little change in shipments, senior shipping executives, Asian oil buyers and satellite imagery suggest traffic through Hormuz is becoming more steady and increasing in volume.

Even so, the passages are still far below the prewar average of about 135 ship transits a day.

Trump earlier Wednesday posted that the U.S. military had supported the passage of “more than 200 commercial ships” through the key waterway, resulting in “more than 100 million barrels of oil” making it to market. He went on to claim the U.S. controls the strait, “not Iran.”

Here’s more on the war:

•Qatari negotiators departed Tehran following discussions on the war, AFP reported. Doha has emerged as an increasingly important mediator in recent weeks, alongside Pakistan.

•India summoned a senior U.S. diplomat after a strike on a second Indian-crewed vessel in the Gulf of Oman this week left three sailors dead.

•Another tanker appears to have been hit. It reported that it was in distress and its engine room was on fire on Thursday in waters off Oman.

•Nikki Haley, Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations in his first term, expressed skepticism in an interview with Bloomberg that negotiations would succeed. “Iran was never going to do a deal,” she said.

—With assistance from Abeer Abu Omar and Shruthi Rajendran.

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