The price of Brent crude soared after Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen claimed strikes on two Saudi tankers. The House cast a second vote to rein in President Trump’s war powers, with…

The price of Brent crude soared after Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen claimed strikes on two Saudi tankers. The House cast a second vote to rein in President Trump’s war powers, with four Republicans joining Democrats to rebuke the president. The price of oil hit $100 a barrel on Thursday for the first time since May after Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen claimed to have hit two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea, stoking fears that another crucial shipping route would be choked off by the widening conflict. The Houthis’ strikes were the first since the group announced a blockade on Saudi ships this week. After the United States and Iran traded strikes across the Middle East for a 12th consecutive night, President Trump said on social media on Thursday that he would hold Iran responsible for any further Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and threatened to expand the conflict to include the Yemeni group. Iran has already largely closed the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, throttling the world’s oil and gas supplies. The price of Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, dipped after the two sides agreed to a preliminary truce last month, but it has inched up again since the fighting resumed. Oil prices are now 40 percent higher than they were before the war started in February. The Saudi authorities said there had been an attack on one ship, the Encelia, adding that the crew was safe, without specifying the origin of the attack. The Saudi government has not commented on the Houthi claim regarding the second ship. The steady escalation of the conflict over the past two weeks provided the backdrop for a vote in the House of Representatives on Thursday that for a second time asked Mr. Trump to seek Congress’ authorization to keep U.S. troops engaged in the war. Mr. Trump effectively ignored a similar rebuke last month, and later on Thursday Republicans in the Senate blocked the measure from passing. Neither the United States nor Iran has signaled much appetite for a return to negotiations. In recent days, Iranian and American officials have promised to respond to each other’s attacks with fresh ones of their own, with each trying to outlast the other. U.S. Central Command, which coordinates military operations in the Middle East, said it had launched a wave of strikes overnight to degrade Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping, targeting Iranian drone and missile storage sites and air defenses.