Tehran (AFP) – New violence shook the Middle East early Monday as the United States announced another wave of attacks on Iran. Kuwait said it was intercepting drones, and Tehran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed to have hit an “enemy command centre” in Syria. Bahrain’s interior ministry also reported that its air raid sirens had sounded and urged citizens and residents to head to “the nearest safe place”.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) late Sunday announced it was beginning a wave of strikes on Iran for the ninth night in a row. The attacks were aimed at “degrading Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners” in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, as stated in a post on X. A preliminary deal aimed at ending the war has collapsed as the foes fight to break a deadlock over the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway key to the world’s oil supply.
Since the start of the war on February 28, Iran has retaliated by targeting US allies and military assets in its own neighborhood, and by virtually blocking the strait through which a fifth of the world’s oil supplies transited prior to the war. Kuwaiti air defenses were “engaging hostile drone attacks following Iranian aggression,” its army reported early Monday. “The General Staff of the Army notes that any explosions heard are a result of air defense systems intercepting the hostile attacks,” a post on the official X account of the Kuwait Army said.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards announced on Monday that they had launched a “surprise attack” on an enemy command centre in Syria, as reported by the state news agency IRNA. They claimed it was “in revenge for the blood of martyred soldiers of Iranshahr,” a city in southeast Iran, in a statement posted on Telegram. Iran stated on Sunday that it had targeted two US bases in Kuwait in response to more than a week of intensifying attacks, which Tehran alleges have hit transport and infrastructure sites, including an under-construction nuclear power plant. Jordan also reported intercepting missiles on Sunday.
The fresh rounds of violence came after a weekend when the US announced three new military fatalities and one service member missing in action. Two service members were killed during Iranian missile and drone attacks on Jordan on Friday, while another died in northern Iraq during the controlled detonation of an unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian drone, according to CENTCOM. President Donald Trump stated that the latest US strikes on Iran “hit them very hard again tonight” in honor of the American fatalities.
The deaths increased the confirmed number of American military fatalities to 17 since the US and Israel launched the war with a wave of strikes on Iranian targets on February 28. That toll is dwarfed by Iran’s reported casualties, with its health ministry stating Friday that 50 people had been killed in recent fighting and more than 500 injured. The renewed violence was initially sparked by Iranian attacks on ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz. Iran closed the conduit for oil and gas shipments after the war erupted, and control over it has become leverage in its negotiations with Washington, which has reimposed its own blockade on Iranian ports.
On Sunday, the Revolutionary Guards claimed that two ships attempting to transit the strait were stopped. “Four violating ships, with the mischief and support of American terrorists… intended to disrupt and exit the Strait of Hormuz via an unsafe route, two of which had an accident and were stopped in place,” the Guards stated, adding that the other two ships abandoned their journey.
Hope for a political settlement to the war has dimmed, though mediators have attempted to bring both sides back to the negotiating table. Iran’s central military commander, Ali Abdollahi, warned that further US aggression would face a “decisive and devastating response,” according to a statement carried by state television on Sunday. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran reported that the United States had attacked the unfinished Darkhovin nuclear power plant in the country’s southwest, calling it “an aggressive and brutal act contrary to international law.”
The UN’s nuclear watchdog said it was looking into the report, noting that the plant “contained no nuclear material when last visited by the IAEA.” Nonetheless, IAEA director Rafael Grossi reiterated his call for military restraint in the vicinity of all nuclear-related sites, as conveyed in a post on X.
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