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US strikes Iranian targets in Syria: Pentagon
The U.S. military carried out strikes against two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and groups it backs, the Pentagon said on Thursday, in response to a spate of attacks against U.S. forces in both Iraq and Syria, Reuters reported.
As tensions soar over the Israel-Hamas conflict, U.S. and coalition troops have been attacked at least 19 times in Iraq and in Syria by Iran-backed forces in the past week.
A total of 21 U.S. forces have suffered minor injuries, the vast majority of them traumatic brain injuries.
“These precision self-defense strikes are a response to a series of ongoing and mostly unsuccessful attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups that began on October 17,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement.
The strikes were ordered by President Joe Biden, Reuters reported.
“These Iranian-backed attacks against U.S. forces are unacceptable and must stop,” Austin said in the statement.
“If attacks by Iran’s proxies against U.S. forces continue, we will not hesitate to take further necessary measures to protect our people.”
The strikes took place at roughly 4:30 a.m. on Friday in Syria (0130 GMT) near Abu Kamal, a Syrian town on the border with Iraq, and were carried out by two F-16 fighter jets using precision munitions, a senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said.
The targets were weapons and munitions storage facilities, the official added, speaking late on Thursday to reporters in Washington, read the report.
The United States has occasionally carried out retaliatory strikes against Iranian-backed forces in the region after they attack American forces. In March, the U.S. military carried out multiple air strikes in Syria against Iran-aligned groups that it blamed for a drone attack that killed an American contractor.
President Biden has sent a rare message to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warning Tehran against targeting U.S. personnel in the Middle East, the White House said earlier on Thursday.
According to Reuters the United States has 900 troops in Syria, and 2,500 more in neighboring Iraq, on a mission to advise and assist local forces trying to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State, which in 2014 seized large swathes of both countries but was later defeated.
There is growing concern that the Israel-Hamas conflict could spread through the Middle East and turn U.S. troops at isolated bases into targets.
“What we want is for Iran to take very specific actions, to direct its militias and proxies to stand down,” a senior U.S. defense official said.
The United States did not coordinate the strikes with Israel, the official added.
Last week off the coast of Yemen, a U.S. warship shot down more than a dozen drones and four cruise missiles fired by Iranian-backed Houthis.
During a false alarm at Al-Asad air base in Iraq last week, a civilian contractor died from cardiac arrest.
The United States has sent warships and fighter aircraft to the region since the Israel-Hamas conflict erupted on Oct. 7, including two aircraft carriers, to try to deter Iran and Iran-backed groups. The number of troops added to the region is in the thousands.
Reuters reported this week the U.S. military was taking new measures to protect its Middle East forces during the ramp-up in attacks by suspected Iran-backed groups, and was leaving open the possibility of evacuating military families if needed.
The measures include increasing U.S. military patrols, restricting access to base facilities and boosting intelligence collection, including through drone and other surveillance operations, officials say.
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Iran, US continue escalating attacks, recriminations over peace deal
US Central Command said earlier that its forces had carried out fresh strikes after a Panama-flagged tanker was attacked by an Iranian drone on Saturday.
Iran and the US continued their attacks in the Gulf as each accused the other of violating an increasingly precarious interim deal signed less than two weeks ago to end their four-month-old war, Reuters reported.
Shortly after President Donald Trump warned the US might “militarily complete the job”, Iran early on Sunday launched missiles and drones on US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain, continuing a series of escalating attacks.
Beyond the Gulf, Israel said it had struck Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon as fighting continued in an area Tehran says is key to its peace deal with Washington.
The U.S. military said earlier it had struck Iran again, hours after a tanker was hit in the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important energy shipping route, which Iran had largely cut off for most of the conflict.
The 14-point U.S.-Iran interim agreement was meant to halt the fighting, which the US and Israel started on February 28, and reopen the strait to shipping while talks proceeded on more deep-seated issues, such as Iran’s nuclear programme.
One round of mediated talks, led by Vice President JD Vance and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, was held in Switzerland a week ago and Washington then waived sanctions on Tehran, but the fighting and recriminations have since resumed and intensified.
“There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started,” Trump posted on social media. “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”
About an hour after Trump’s post, the Kuwaiti army said its air defences were responding to “hostile” missile and drone attacks, while sirens sounded in Bahrain, according to that country’s interior ministry.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said its navy and air forces had launched missile and drone operations targeting US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain in response to recent US strikes against Iran, read the report.
The Guards said in a statement the US strikes had violated the ceasefire and “will result in the complete halt of all diplomatic processes”, according to state-run Press TV. The IRGC navy command said American bases in the region “will experience hell in the coming days”.
A US official, confirming the attacks on US facilities, told Reuters there were no reported US casualties or major damage to US sites in the Middle East but that the situation was still unfolding.
Hours later, alarms sounded for a second time in Bahrain, and the foreign ministry there condemned the attacks as a deliberate and repeated violation of the kingdom’s sovereignty and security. It urged the U.N. Security Council to hold an urgent session to hold Iran accountable.
US Central Command said earlier that its forces had carried out fresh strikes after a Panama-flagged tanker was attacked by an Iranian drone on Saturday.
“Iran was given a chance to honor the ceasefire agreement but elected not to,” Central Command said in a statement, adding that its strikes were “in direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping” and targeted Iranian military surveillance, communications, air defence, drone storage and mine-laying facilities.
Iranian state broadcaster IRIB said explosions were heard in Sirik in southern Iran, without providing details. The Guards said “America’s blind shots at Sirik will not resolve our dominance over the Strait of Hormuz. But our shots at violators will remind the rest of the vessels of the clear passage route.”
Saturday’s tanker attack in the strait followed one on a cargo ship on Thursday that triggered the latest escalation. Iran is seeking to assert control over the strait, which carried one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies before the war and which had just begun to reopen after months of disruption, Reuters reported.
Hundreds of ships, including tankers laden with oil, have been blockaded inside the Gulf since war broke out. As they began leaving through the strait over the past two weeks, oil prices have tumbled close to pre-war levels on the surge in supply.
Washington has been promoting a southern lane along the coast of Oman, while Tehran, which ultimately aims to charge fees for use of the strait, wants ships to use a northern route through its waters and under its control.
In Lebanon, Israel said on Sunday it had killed Hezbollah militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and struck a rocket launcher in the Nabatieh area.
Iran accuses the US of violating its commitment under the peace deal to sustaining a ceasefire in Lebanon, which US ally Israel invaded in March in pursuit of Hezbollah.
Israel, which is not a party to the US-Iran deal, and Lebanon have repeatedly agreed to US-brokered ceasefires, the latest on Friday. But these have had only limited effect, with Israel insisting it will not withdraw from Lebanese territory it has seized and Hezbollah repeatedly rejecting calls to give up its arms as long as Israeli troops remain in place.
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US strikes Iran in response to attack on cargo ship in Strait of Hormuz
The U.S. did not immediately respond to Iran’s report of striking American targets, a tactic that has sought to undermine U.S. allies in the region during the conflict.
The U.S. military attacked Iran on Friday in response to an Iranian drone strike on a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, with each country accusing the other of violating terms of a ceasefire agreed on last week, Reuters reported.
U.S. Central Command said aircraft struck missile and drone storage locations and coastal radar sites, later publishing a grainy black-and-white video of an explosion labeled “unclassified.” A U.S. official reported the operation had concluded.
Iran said a projectile struck the area around a pier in Sirik in southern Iran, and that Iranian naval forces responded by striking U.S. military targets in the region. Tehran did not provide details about what may have been hit.
Elsewhere, however, there were signs of progress in ending the four-month-old conflict, as Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement to end the fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah. Both sides framed the deal as an initial step that calls for Hezbollah to disarm and Israel to withdraw troops from Lebanon, but it was not clear how it would be enforced. Hezbollah said it would not cooperate.
Tehran has said it would control the Strait of Hormuz and warned Gulf states not to side with Washington after Thursday’s attack on a cargo ship traveling near Oman’s coast. President Donald Trump blamed the attack on Iran and said it violated last week’s interim agreement.
“The unwarranted aggression against commercial shipping by Iranian forces clearly violated the ceasefire,” U.S. Central Command said in its statement announcing strikes, which it called “a powerful response to yesterday’s attack on a commercial ship that was transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”
The U.S. military said it would continue to provide “safe passage coordination and support” to commercial vessels transiting the strait.
Vice President JD Vance, once seen as a skeptic on U.S. intervention in Iran but now a Trump administration point person on the conflict, said the Americans have honored the ceasefire deal, also known as a memorandum of understanding.
“Iran signed a ceasefire agreement. We have honored it. If they have disagreements about how the MOU is being applied, they can pick up the phone. But violence will be met with violence,” Vance said on X.
Iranian state media, citing an unnamed military source, reported the strike at the port of Sirik after an explosion was heard there. The source said several warning shots had been fired from Sirik toward vessels that violated Strait of Hormuz regulations about five hours earlier, adding two warning missiles had also been launched from the nearby Karpan area toward the strategic waterway, read the report.
On Saturday, Iran’s Mehr news agency cited the head of ports at eastern Hormozgan as saying that there was no damage to the port of Sirik after the attack by the U.S. The official said the port was operating normally with no damage reported to facilities and equipment.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that in response its navy “struck the locations where the terrorist U.S. military is stationed in the region” and warned that any further U.S. attacks would be met with a broader response, according to the statement carried on state media.
The ceasefire agreement gives Iran control over ship traffic in the strait, the Guards said.
“However, the United States, by provoking various fronts, sought to violate this commitment, and the necessary response was given and will continue to be given. If the aggression is repeated, our response will be broader than this,” the Revolutionary Guards said.
The U.S. did not immediately respond to Iran’s report of striking American targets, a tactic that has sought to undermine U.S. allies in the region during the conflict.
Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, said in response to the latest strikes that Trump has failed to show a commitment to the principles of negotiation or ceasefire.
“This reckless violation of the ceasefire will, as always, lead to retreat and regret on their part,” Azizi posted on X.
Before the renewed outbreak of violence, oil prices fell about 3% on Friday, on course for steep weekly losses, in response to oil tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies before the U.S. and Israel launched the war on February 28, Reuters reported.
Saudi Aramco resumed crude loadings at its Ras Tanura terminal in the Gulf, the world’s biggest oil port, after a nearly four-month halt, shipping data showed.
Fertilizer shipments through the strait have also picked up, helping to assuage concerns about a spike in global food prices.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — wrapping up a tour of the Gulf to reassure regional allies about the interim pact — issued a joint statement with the Gulf Cooperation Council calling for “free, unconditional, and unrestricted navigation” in the strait without tolls or “attempts to assert control.”
Iran’s foreign ministry said the strait should be governed by Iran and Oman, while Ali Akbar Velayati, top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, warned Washington’s Gulf allies their survival depended on Tehran’s tolerance.
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Iran’s Pezeshkian says without missiles his country would be ‘just like Gaza’
The Iranian president stressed that Tehran’s defensive capabilities are not open to negotiation.
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