Iran targeted U.S. allies in the Middle East in overnight attacks that followed American strikes on Sunday, bringing a sharp end to a period of tenuous quiet.
The U.S. attacks struck Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the Strait of Hormuz as Iranian forces were preparing to disperse sea mines into the waterway, said Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for Central Command.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps quickly warned that the U.S. strikes would “result in the punishment of the aggressor” and fired ballistic missiles at a Jordanian air base housing U.S. troops, the country’s state news agency reported.
Jordan said it had intercepted eight missiles in the country’s airspace, and the United Arab Emirates said it had shot down an Iranian drone near its territorial waters.
The exchange of fire was the first in a month between the two sides as the Trump administration seeks to navigate a ceasefire.
A top adviser to the UAE’s president said that Iran’s targeting of the Gulf countries and Jordan had “proven ineffective” and called for de-escalation. “A state of neither war nor peace cannot be a sustainable solution,” the adviser, Anwar Gargash, said.
The flare-up of hostilities comes as many of the 50,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East are focused on a naval blockade of Iran, ordered by President Donald Trump to inflict economic pressure on Tehran, with no end to the six-month conflict on the horizon.
Iran’s hard-line regime appears firmly entrenched, and the diminished military and militia network has still proven capable of attacking U.S. bases in the region. An Iranian attack in Jordan killed three U.S. soldiers last month, triggering a retaliatory cycle in which U.S. forces launched dozens of airstrikes.
U.S. forces in the region cleared long-lingering mines from shipping routes last week and “remain prepared to protect the free flow of commerce through this essential waterway,” Hawkins said.
“Iran has been notified that any ship or boat placing new mines will be immediately and systematically destroyed,” Trump said on social media last week.
U.S. forces have endured an intense pace of military operations in the Middle East since late February, when scores of aircraft, warships and personnel were ordered into the region.
The commanders and service chiefs who provided those forces recently warned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that continuing the pace of operations is unsustainable and risks weakening their ability to confront threats elsewhere, including the U.S. homeland, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
That includes elements of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, which in March mobilized 2,000 soldiers. Their deployment will be extended to a year, Maj. Gen. Brandon R. Tegtmeier, the division commander, said in a letter dated Sunday.
The letter to families of the service members, reviewed by The Post, acknowledges the difficult mobilization and that leaders “understand that a longer tour weighs heavily on every household, including our own.”
Paratroopers from the 82nd would be called upon to support any Iranian ground assaults ordered by Trump. The division also sent artillery support, engineers and air defense personnel.
El Chamaa and Haidamous reported from Beirut.
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