US airstrikes target Iran's Bandar Abbas, Qeshm Island
American military forces launched their first strikes on the Iranian mainland in more than a month just days after the top US commander for the region said Iranian mines have been cleared from Hormuz shipping lanes.
WASHINGTON — The US military said it bombed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sites in southern Iran on Tuesday in response to renewed projectile attacks on commercial ships and a recent ballistic missile attack targeting at least one US bases in Jordan.
Explosions were reported in the southern Iranian port area of Bandar Abbas as well as in Chabahar and the island of Qeshm in the Strait of Hormuz. Following the wave of naval and air strikes, US Central Command said its forces had hit “air defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets and facilities, mine laying capabilities and communications sites” belonging to the IRGC.
US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the latest round of US strikes came in response to Iran’s forces allegedly attempting to place additional mines in the Strait of Hormuz.
Describing the strikes as a “large and powerful,” Trump wrote on Truth Social that the latest round also came as retaliation for “the Iranians shooting eight missiles, all successfully knocked down” before they could strike at least one US base in Jordan over the weekend.
“If the failed Nation of Iran retaliates for this very justified attack, they will be hit again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings,” Trump posted.
The US military carried out the strikes over a roughly six-hour period, just one day after two tankers laden with Saudi oil were hit minutes apart by projectiles off the coast of Oman as they were attempting to traverse the strait. US officials said Iran was behind that attack.
Iranian state media also reported strikes near Konarak late on Tuesday. The deputy governor of Hormozgan Province told Iran’s state broadcaster that a strike had hit a residential building where a wedding celebration was being held in Kuhestak. The Iranian Red Crescent initially reported two people were killed in that attack, but later updated the toll to five dead, including at least one child, and some 68 other people injured.
Iran’s retaliation for the US military’s barrages came within hours. Jordan’s Armed Forces announced that its air defense units had engaged 13 incoming missiles while shooting down ten of then over the country’s territory on Tuesday night. The remainder fell in unpopulated areas, according to the Jordanian Army statement.
Kuwait’s military also said its air defenses were engaging incoming missiles and drones. The impact of Iran’s retaliatory attacks was not immediately clear.
Iran’s IRGC said it targeted US military facilities at Erbil’s air base in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
There were no initial reports of American casualties in that attack, a US official briefed on the initial assessments told Al-Monitor. “Our people are fine,” the official said.
Earlier this week on Monday, US warplanes bombed sites on Iran's Larak Island near the port of Bandar Abbas in the Strait of Hormuz. US Navy Capt. Timothy Hawkins, CENTCOM’s top spokesperson, told Al-Monitor following the strikes that they had been preemptive to stop IRGC forces that were "preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz."
The Pentagon's top commander for the Middle East, Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, announced last week in a pre-recorded video address that the main internationally utilized shipping corridors in the Hormuz Strait had been cleared of explosive naval mines. The US Navy began de-mining operations around Hormuz in April.
American military forces in the region "are monitoring the area closely and remain prepared to protect the free flow of commerce" via the strait, Hawkins said on Monday.
This week's tit-for-tat attacks broke a monthlong period of relative calm following several months of direct fighting between the two warring sides, as the Trump administration has shifted the campaign’s emphasis away from military escalation to economic pressure via secondary sanctions.
Tuesday’s strikes by the US appeared to demonstrate that the Trump White House is not averse to resuming limited military counterattacks against Iran to periodically degrade the IRGC’s military assets around Hormuz if the paramilitary faction continues to launch missiles in the region.
This story has been updated since its initial publication.
