The U.S. military struck Iranian radar and drone sites near the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, prompting Iran to retaliate on Monday with missile fire into Kuwait — the latest exchange of attacks to threaten ongoing negotiations to end the war.
U.S. Central Command said its strikes, carried out in the coastal city of Goruk and on Qeshm Island, targeted Iranian air defenses, a ground control station and two attack drones. that it said posed clear threats to ships in regional waters. Its strikes came after Iran shot down a U.S. MQ-1 drone operating over international waters.
Both Goruk and Qeshm Island are strategic sites overlooking the strait, where Iran has sought to blockade most international shipping and the U.S. has been escorting commercial vessels through in defiance of Tehran’s closure.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had launched missiles from Khuzestan province in retaliation for what it said was a U.S. strike on a telecommunications tower on Sirik Island. The IRGC said that its targets “were destroyed” and warned that any repeated strike would draw a “completely different” response.
Kuwait’s military, posting Monday on X, said it was “responding to hostile missile and drone threats,” and that any sounds of explosions were the result of air defense systems intercepting Iranian attacks.
No casualties or damage was reported, according to local media, although civil aviation was disrupted, with diversions and holding patterns over parts of the Persian Gulf region.
Iran said it had targeted a U.S.-linked air base.
The back-and-forth strikes follow a pattern that repeatedly has tested the nominal truce since it took hold in April, even as officials from both sides work to finalize a memorandum of understanding to extend the ceasefire by 60 days and open a new round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
It is unclear how close negotiators are to a deal, with Tehran and the White House at times giving conflicting or inconsistent statements.
So far, the intermittent tit-for-tat strikes have not derailed the negotiations.
Vice President JD Vance said Sunday that the two sides remained “back and forth on a couple of language points” and that it was “hard to say exactly when, or if, the president’s going to sign the MOU.”
Among the core sticking points, officials said, are Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that any deal would require Iran to turn over its nuclear fuel and commit that it would not to pursue a nuclear weapon.
Skeptics of a deal, including some congressional Republicans, have said Iran cannot be trusted to abandon its nuclear program and have warned against the release of billions in frozen funds that Tehran has demanded as part of any agreement.
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