DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The U.S. military launched airstrikes Sunday targeting Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard to retaliate for the killing of American troops in Jordan, further widening the crossfire between the nations as they fight over Strait of Hormuz.
The strikes, now part of a weeklong campaign that has seen Iran strike U.S.-allied countries across the Middle East, comes as an interim deal seeking to find an end to the Iran war has collapsed.
The U.S. has targeted bridges, electrical facilities and other targets in Iran, and Tehran has retaliated by hitting power and desalination plants in Kuwait, threatening daily life in that small, oil-rich desert nation. Iran also has stepped up its threats to further expand the strikes, drawing a warning overnight from the United Arab Emirates, home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
Latest U.S. strikes come after troops killed
The U.S. military’s Central Command in its statement also said it hit “Iranian military coastal surveillance and air defense facilities, maritime capabilities and missile and drone storage sites.” It also said for the first time it specifically targeting the Guard, a key power base in Iran's theocracy that controls its ballistic missile arsenal.
Footage released by the U.S. military appeared to show strikes carried out by fighter jets and by Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from sea. One target site appeared to be in a valley of a mountainous region. The Guard often has missile bases and other military equipment tucked into mountain ranges.
Iran has provided no overall information on its materiel losses in the American campaign, which now is in its eighth day as the nations vie over control of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil and natural gas traded passes in peacetime.
An Iranian attack on a base in Jordan killed two American service members, left one missing and four requiring hospitalization, the U.S. military said.
Since the war began, 16 U.S. service members have been killed and over 430 wounded.
Iranian authorities said Saturday that at least 50 people have been killed and more than 500 wounded in the latest U.S. strikes.
Strikes target southern Iran
An area near Sirik, on the Strait of Hormuz, was targeted around 1:30 a.m. local time, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency, which cited local authorities in southern Hormozgan province.
In the same province, a location near Hajiabad was targeted and explosions were heard in Bandar Abbas, according to IRNA. An area near Qeshm Island, which is inside the strait, was also targeted, according to Iran's state-run broadcaster, IRIB.
On Saturday, Iranian state media reported that U.S. airstrikes had hit an electricity and desalination plant in Hormozgan and damaged tunnels and bridges, disrupting a main highway toward Bandar Abbas, the site of Iran’s main port near the narrowest part of the strait.
An official in Khuzestan province, also on the Gulf, said a strike hit near the city of Shadegan, according to state media.
Trump has threatened to target Iran’s power stations and bridges to try to compel Tehran to loosen its hold on the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. in the past week also reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to halt its shipments of crude oil, and the military on Saturday said it had redirected five ships and disabled one since then.
Iranian authorities said Saturday that at least 50 people have been killed and more than 500 wounded in U.S. strikes in the past three weeks, including eight killed in a strike on a bridge Friday.
Strikes hit Iraq's Kurdish region
In neighboring Iraq, a base of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, an Iranian Kurdish dissident group, near Irbil was struck by a drone early Sunday, wounding eight of its members, according to Rebaz Sharifi, a military official with the group.
Residents of Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, also heard explosions from air defenses early Sunday.
Irbil has been targeted by drone attacks multiple times over the past four days, which coincided with a visit by new Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi to Washington last week and an ongoing escalation between the U.S. and Iran.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but in the past both Iran and Iran-backed Iraqi militias have launched attacks in the Kurdish region, where both U.S. troops and armed Kurdish Iranian dissident groups are present.
Iran's supreme leader warns of ‘unforgettable lessons’
Minutes before the U.S. announced the troop deaths earlier Saturday, Iran’s supreme leader warned of “unforgettable lessons” if the U.S. keeps attacking the Islamic Republic.
The remarks read out on state TV and attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei, still unseen since the war began, called President Donald Trump’s signature “worthless and invalid.” An Iranian negotiator said Tehran was suspending its commitments to the interim deal signed about a month ago and aimed at permanently ending the fighting.
Iran’s joint military command said that U.S. “covetousness, bullying, totalitarianism or brutality” would meet with a “devastating response.”
Tehran's declarations snapped another fragile thread as the war shows no end in sight. Now Khamenei warns of “lessons” not only from Iran but also its armed proxies in the region, calling them the “Axis of Resistance." The U.S. issued a global travel alert over the rising tensions.
The battle has focused on control of the Strait of Hormuz. The widening strikes now threaten civilians and infrastructure, including desalination plants for drinking water, while the global economy again is on alert.
The U.S. has violated its commitments under the deal and now Iran is “no longer implementing them,” Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, told state TV.
There was no new word on mediation efforts.
US soldiers face growing risks
The last recorded death of a U.S. service member was that of a helicopter pilot who crashed in the Arabian Sea earlier this month. Early in the war, an Iranian drone strike on a command center in Kuwait killed six soldiers. Another soldier died after an attack on a base in Saudi Arabia, and six were killed when a refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq.
On Saturday, the most significant damage from Iranian strikes occurred in Kuwait, where a water desalination plant and an oil facility were hit, according to the Kuwait authorities and the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation. Both declined to provide locations.
It was the second attack against a desalination plant in two days in the tiny desert nation that depends on desalination for 90% of its drinking water. The strikes injured several people at the oil facility and caused a fire at the desalination plant, forcing several power generation units offline.
Several firefighters and a worker were injured while battling two other blazes sparked by Iranian strikes, according to the Kuwait Fire Force. Kuwait briefly closed its airspace due to missile threats, and Kuwait Airways said it was rescheduling most flights to and from the capital.
Jordan’s state-run Petra news agency said the kingdom’s air defense systems had downed Iranian missiles, while air sirens sounded multiple times in Bahrain throughout the day and in Saudi Arabia in the morning, according to their governments.
The secretary-general of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, Jasem Mohamed al-Budaiwi, accused Iran of war crimes for strikes on infrastructure and civilian facilities.
