The United States has launched a third consecutive night of air strikes against Iran, escalating a confrontation that has placed an already fragile ceasefire in growing jeopardy.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) said its forces began the latest wave at 4.45pm eastern time on July 13, acting on the orders of President Donald Trump.
The command said the operation lasted around five hours and struck military targets at Bushehr, Chah Bahar, Jask, Konarak, Abu Musa and Bandar Abbas. It said the aim was to degrade Iran’s capacity to attack commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
CENTCOM said its forces had used precision munitions against Iranian coastal defence systems, missile and drone bases and naval capabilities along the coast.
The strikes followed a warning by Trump, given in an interview with the conservative Salem News Channel, that Washington would hit Tehran hard on July 13 and again the following day.
“We’re going to hit them very hard tonight,” Trump said, adding that Iran could do nothing to stop it.
Speaking later from the Oval Office, the President said Iran had breached the interim agreement reached with Washington “probably about ten times”. The provisional accord, announced in June, had called for an immediate halt to military action.
Iranian officials said the American strikes had hit at least eight locations across Khuzestan province in the country’s southwest. One person was killed and four others were injured when a projectile struck a water-pumping station at Mahshahr, according to the state news agency IRNA.
Iran’s armed forces said they had retaliated by striking US military targets in Kuwait with drones and missiles, hitting communications systems, fuel tanks and an ammunition depot at a base there.
The Iranian navy also claimed to have fired cruise missiles at what it described as a hostile American vessel, in response to the strikes on Iranian military sites.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said its air defences had shot down an American drone over the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian media reported explosions on the islands of Kish, Qeshm and Abu Musa and at Bandar Abbas, the country’s main port in the region.
The exchanges have cast fresh doubt over the interim deal, which was meant to end the fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil passes.
Trump has cast the memorandum as a test he would rather not have faced, signalling that Washington intends to keep up the pressure on Tehran.
