Iran struck American military sites hosted by Kuwait and Bahrain on Monday after the United States launched a wave of strikes overnight, escalating a stop-and-start conflict that has become the new status quo between the two nations since their tenuous ceasefire collapsed in early July.
In a statement carried by state media Monday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said that it targeted multiple U.S. military facilities at Kuwait’s Ali Al-Salem Air Base. Iran also claimed to have struck U.S. drone installations at Bahrain’s Salman Port and Sakhir Air Base, along with American assets at Kuwait’s Camp Arifjan, according to the semiofficial Tasnim News Agency, which is associated with the IRGC. Bahrain’s defense forces confirmed they had intercepted multiple rounds of aerial attacks Monday.
Separately, Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels announced Monday a blockade on Saudi Arabia’s oil shipments through the Red Sea’s Bab el-Mandeb Strait, closing off one of the Gulf’s few viable alternatives to the Strait of Hormuz for exporting oil.
If the Houthis were to successfully block the Red Sea route, that would reduce global oil supply by 7 percent at a time when the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has already halted 10 percent of global oil shipments.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that the U.S. strikes on Iran — the ninth consecutive night of American attacks — were in retribution for an Iranian attack that killed two U.S. service members at a military base in Jordan. Trump called the deaths “a very sad thing.”
First Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, were killed in the Friday strike, according to a Pentagon statement Monday. Remains of a third person, whose identity has not been released, were also found at the base, Centcom said Sunday.
Feehan served with the 32nd Army Air Missile Defense Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, while Gonzales was assigned to the 10th Army Air Missile Defense Command in Ansbach, Germany.
Their deaths, along with that of another service member in Iraq on Saturday, bring the number of American soldiers killed since Trump initiated the war on Feb. 28 to 17.
Before the tit-for-tat strikes of the past two weeks, the U.S.-Iran ceasefire briefly reenergized hopes that the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened for ship traffic.
The past few days have instead threatened to enlarge the conflict and further drive up oil prices. The IRGC said Monday that two oil tankers had “exploded” and were left disabled after attempting to take a route through the strait that Iran considers to be unauthorized.
The average price of gas in the United States hit $4 a gallon on Monday, the second time it has reached that mark since the war disrupted global oil supplies, according to AAA data. Gas prices last reached that price on March 31, a month into the war.
The price of oil also briefly rose above $90 a barrel on Monday for the first time since June.
Even as both sides continued to trade strikes, mediators reached out to Tehran with an offer for a 10-day ceasefire.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei confirmed in a news conference in Tehran on Monday that messages from Washington had reached Tehran through Qatari intermediaries.
“The diplomatic apparatus has been active in recent days and ideas have been conveyed to us by certain mediators,” Baqaei said, according to Agence France-Presse, but declined to go into the details of the ceasefire offer.
Baqaei blamed Washington for the recent escalation, adding that Iran held “no hostility” toward regional states but expected them to prevent their territory from being used for attacks against it.
The U.S. “always remains open to a diplomatic solution,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters earlier on Sunday. But, he added, “it’s growing apparent that even within their own system, there’s a growing split.”
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