Commuters walk past a wall mural along the street in Tehran on July 21.
Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images
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Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images
AMMAN, Jordan — The U.S. military launched more airstrikes on Iran early Wednesday as Iran hit back against U.S. military targets in the Gulf and Jordan.
The attacks overshadowed diplomatic efforts in Pakistan, one of the conflict’s mediators, where Iranian Interior Minister Eskander Momeni visited for talks potentially aimed at reviving a collapsed ceasefire between the United States and Iran.
The fighting also comes as the Trump administration is seeking billions of dollars in emergency funding from Congress for the conflict. On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers that the war with Iran has already cost $37.5 billion.
U.S. Central Command said it targeted Iranian military operations centers, maritime capabilities, aircraft hangars, drone storage facilities and military logistics infrastructure in its 11th consecutive night of attacks. It said the attacks were aimed at degrading Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz — a vital shipping channel.
Iranian state media reported explosions in seven Iranian provinces and said attacks included a strike on an electrical installation close to a nuclear power plant in Bushehr province.
Oil prices rose again Wednesday, at one point topping $94 per barrel for global benchmark crude, after Iran attacked a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. The average price of regular gasoline in the U.S. has crept further above $4 a gallon, according to AAA.
The British military’s U.K. Maritime Trade Operations Centre said a tanker was attacked Tuesday in the disputed area. The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow channel in Iranian and Omani territorial waters but open under international law to freedom of navigation. It has been effectively closed by Iran since the start of the war.
President Trump on Wednesday repeated his threat for Iran to stop attacking vessels in the strait or else face U.S. strikes against Iranian civilian infrastructure. “From this point forward, any time the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, whether it be by Missile, Rocket, Drone, or any other device or weapon, the United States will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT, including those located next to, or in, the Capital City of Tehran,” he wrote online.
Another front opens over another strait
Contributing to market nervousness over global oil and gas supplies, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, declared that Bab el-Mandeb, a Red Sea waterway crucial to Saudi Arabia’s exports, would be off limits to that country. The group also warned international shipping companies to avoid this waterway. It connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, and to the Suez canal and the Mediterranean Sea.
The Houthis’ Ansar Allah (Partisans of God) military and political movement controls the north and center of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa. An internationally recognized Yemeni government, supported by Saudi Arabia, controls the south.
The Shia Muslim Houthis are backed by Iran and a key part of Iran’s “axis of resistance,” which has joined in attacks on U.S. and Israeli targets.
The Houthi-run news agency said six ships in the Red Sea turned course on Tuesday after it issued the warning. Commercial shipping trackers said several tankers loaded with Saudi oil backed out of the waterway to avoid attack.
The latest round of strikes came after President Trump told reporters Tuesday that the U.S. was planning to target a fortified underground site near one of Iran’s main uranium enrichment facilities. Iranian state media said Iran would consider any attack on nuclear or “other sensitive facilities” a major escalation.
Trump also said that the Iranians “want to meet desperately to try and end it because they are getting decimated.” He added, “until they’re ready to meet in a meaningful way, we have no interest.”
Meanwhile, Iran has said that while it is potentially open to negotiations if they safeguard Iran’s national interests, it does not trust the United States.
Iran said Wednesday it again targeted an air base in eastern Jordan where three U.S. military personnel were killed in an attack last week. Iran also hit the Sheikh Isa air base in Bahrain, a logistical hub for the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
The Pentagon on Tuesday identified the third service member who was killed in Jordan as Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28, of Ozone Park, N.Y., bringing the number of U.S. casualties killed during the Iran war to 18. She had been reported as missing after the direct missile hit on Friday.
Iran buries more children’s remains from Minab school attack
Mourners carry the coffins containing additional remains of victims identified through DNA testing during funeral ceremonies in Minab, Iran, on Tuesday, according to state media, nearly five months after they were killed in the Feb. 28 strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh School.
Razieh Poudat/ISNA via AP
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Razieh Poudat/ISNA via AP
Iran’s government says about 3,000 people in Iran, many of them civilians, have been killed in the war.
Iranian media reported that body fragments of 32 victims of a bombing on an Iranian elementary girls’ school nearly five months ago, identified after DNA tests, were laid to rest Wednesday. Iranian state-run Press TV said they were buried in the Minab cemetery.
Iranian television footage showed a procession of pall-bearers carrying what appeared to be cardboard boxes covered with Iranian flags.
Some of the body fragments were just tiny pieces of children killed in the Feb. 28 airstrike, pieced together after months of searching for remains and DNA testing, Press TV said.
In the video, a sobbing woman sitting on the floor cradles and kisses a tiny shroud wrapped in white netting. Other mourners hold photos of some of the dead children.
Iran blames the U.S. for the missile strike on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and says it killed at least 156 people, including 120 children.
Independent investigations, including one conducted by Goldsmiths, University of London-based research group Forensic Architecture and Sky News, say that U.S. weapons apparently targeting a nearby military compound destroyed the school. The U.S. military has not released results of its investigation.
Iran says 168 students and teachers were killed in a U.S. missile strike on the school in southern Iran on Feb. 28. The U.S. military says it is investigating the attack.
Iranian strikes in Jordan
Jordan said it intercepted six Iranian missiles on Wednesday, with two of them falling in remote, uninhabited areas.
The Israeli military said it detected an attack Wednesday on Aqaba, the Red Sea resort in Jordan, immediately next to the Israeli city of Eilat, but did not intervene as the missile did not threaten Israel.
Iran attacked U.S. military targets at the Aqaba airport earlier this week.
Trump in remarks Tuesday appeared to blame Jordan — a small kingdom which is a U.S. security ally — for the deaths of U.S. personnel at the remote Muwaffaq al-Salti air base in northeastern Jordan.
“They did slip something through in Jordan,” he said, referring to Iranian missiles. “And if we had other operators, you know, would not have happened unfortunately.”
The U.S. operates its own air defenses within the Jordanian base, backed by the Jordanian air force. It was not clear what Trump was referring to.