The US military yesterday launched airstrikes targeting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to retaliate for the killing of US troops in Jordan, further widening the exchange of fire between them as an interim deal seeking an end to their war has collapsed.
The US has over the week targeted bridges, electrical facilities and other sites in Iran, and Tehran has retaliated by hitting power and desalination plants in Kuwait.
Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain again activated air defenses yesterday morning as they warned of incoming Iranian drones and missiles.
Photo: AFP
Israel warned that Iranian missiles launched toward Jordan could cause fire to spill over into its territory for the first time since fighting reignited.
The US Central Command said it hit “Iranian military coastal surveillance and air defense facilities, maritime capabilities and missile and drone storage sites.”
The attack was designed to degrade Iran’s ability to control the Strait of Hormuz and “swiftly punish Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces,” a key power base in Iran’s theocracy that controls its ballistic missile arsenal, it said.
Footage released by the US military appeared to show strikes carried out by fighter jets and by Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from the 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.
An Iranian attack on a base in Jordan killed two US service members, left one missing and four requiring hospitalization, the US military said on Saturday.
Iran’s atomic energy agency said the strikes yesterday morning targeted a construction site of a planned nuclear power plant in southwestern Iran.
Satellite images from Planet Labs PBC of the planned site of the Darkhovin Nuclear Power Plant show earth clearing, but little construction having taken place there as of July 9.
Israel, which has refrained from re-entering the renewed fighting, said Iran has launched missiles toward the nearby Jordanian port city of Aqaba, warning people to expect the first air raid sirens in weeks.
Iran has focused its attacks on US-allied Arab states in the Gulf as well as Jordan, but an Iranian strike on Israeli territory could risk widening the conflict once again.
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