By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Iran fired missiles and drones at American military installations in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan early on Thursday, hours after the United States pushed its bombing campaign deeper into Iranian territory and tightened a naval blockade around the country’s ports, in the latest sharp turn in a war that has ground on for nearly five months over control of the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranian army said its drones had struck communications equipment and fuel depots used by US forces in Jordan, according to state television. Jordan’s military said it shot down eight incoming missiles, an announcement carried by the kingdom’s official Petra news agency.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps separately claimed it had hit radar systems, a Patriot missile battery, and fuel storage at Kuwait’s Ali Al-Salem Air Base, along with American facilities at Bahrain’s Sheikh Isa Air Base, according to state broadcaster IRIB. Kuwaiti officials said air defences intercepted four cruise missiles and 21 drones, causing damage to several installations but no casualties. In Bahrain, air raid sirens sent residents scrambling for shelter across the kingdom.
The overnight barrage followed another round of American airstrikes across Iran, including sites near Tehran, which the US military said it completed just before dawn on Thursday. US Central Command wrote on social media that its forces had hit Iranian command centers, air defence installations, missile and drone facilities, and coastal surveillance sites, including targets around Bandar Abbas — home to Iran’s largest port and key naval and Revolutionary Guard installations along the strait.
Adm. Brad Cooper, who heads Central Command, said Iran had fired dozens of missiles and drones at Gulf Arab neighbours overnight. Missile alerts have become a near-nightly occurrence in Bahrain and Kuwait in recent weeks; Bahrain’s Interior Ministry again urged residents on social media to seek shelter immediately.
Casualty toll climbs
Iran’s Health Ministry said that more than 35 people have died and upward of 300 have been wounded in the American strikes of recent days, according to Hossein Kermanpour, a ministry spokesman. Kermanpour did not distinguish between civilian and military casualties. It was the first cumulative toll Iranian authorities have released for this latest phase of the fighting, and the number of wounded far exceeds any previous stretch of the conflict. Iran’s army said it would deliver what state television described as a “decisive response.”
State television also reported that a separate American strike hit barracks belonging to the 388th Mechanised Infantry Brigade in Sistan and Baluchestan province, killing seven soldiers and wounding a number of others.
US pushes deeper, tightens blockade
Thursday’s American strikes reached farther into Iranian territory than earlier waves in the campaign, with state media reporting attacks around the capital and in Semnan province, where Iran maintains ballistic missile production facilities and its space program. Central Command said it also struck Greater Tunb Island, hitting coastal defense systems and cruise missile sites the military said threatened freedom of navigation through the strait.
Iranian outlets reported additional strikes near Ahvaz, Bandar Abbas, Konarak, Sirik, and Qeshm. IRIB reported that a strike near a hospital in Ahvaz forced the temporary evacuation of a pediatric cancer ward, though Iranian officials had not reported casualties from that wave of strikes as of Thursday.
The attacks came as Washington intensified pressure through a renewed naval blockade of Iranian ports. The US military said it disabled a Curacao-flagged oil tanker bound for Iran’s Kharg Island export terminal after the vessel repeatedly ignored warnings, firing a Hellfire missile into its smokestack to leave it inoperable. Officials said two additional vessels have been redirected since the blockade resumed this week.
Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz after the United States and Israel opened military operations against the country on Feb. 28, choking off a route that before the war carried roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas shipments. Brent crude settled Wednesday at $84.95 a barrel, a one-month high, as traders weighed the prospect of a prolonged disruption.
Tehran vows resistance
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, speaker of Iran’s Parliament and the country’s chief negotiator, said in a statement that Iran was locked in what he called an “existential war with America.” He argued that Iran’s security rested on preserving what he described as Iranian control over the terms governing the Strait, and accused Washington of abandoning an interim agreement reached between the two countries.
“Now that we have entered the implementation phase, the United States, having exhausted its legal and diplomatic options, is trying to undermine those Iranian arrangements through force,” Qalibaf wrote. His remarks appeared directed in part at domestic critics of negotiations with Washington; he argued that talks with the United States should not be mistaken for capitulation.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard warned that regional energy exports would remain at risk for as long as the blockade continues. “The export of oil and gas from the region will be either for everyone or for no one,” the Guard said in a statement. A spokesman for Iran’s military headquarters went further on Thursday, warning that if the United States carries out threats against Iranian infrastructure, “all infrastructure in the region” would be “crushed under the steel blows” of Iran’s armed forces.
Trump says Tehran wants a deal
Even as the fighting widened, President Trump maintained that Iran remains open to a negotiated end to the war. “They don’t like what we’re doing, and they do want to settle,” Trump said during an appearance at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania. “We’ll find out whether or not we settle with them, or we just finish it off.”
Trump also said Thursday that Iran had released an American citizen who had been barred from leaving the country since late 2024, calling it a gesture of goodwill. Human rights lawyer Jared Genser identified the woman as Dena Karari.
The exchange of strikes comes weeks after a fragile interim agreement between the two countries collapsed, reviving fears of a slide back into full-scale regional war as both sides continue trading military blows and public threats over the strait — a waterway whose fate has become the fulcrum of the broader conflict.
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