US strikes Iran in response to ballistic missile launch
US forces launched a new wave of airstrikes against Iran, one night after Tehran fired ballistic missiles on US military positions that were thwarted by air defences, US defence officials said.
The strikes lasted for about two hours today, officials with US Central Command, which oversees operations in the region, said in statements. Dozens of targets affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were hit, Centcom said, “including military command centres, missile and drone facilities, coastal surveillance and defence sites, and maritime capabilities”.
Military officials said the strikes marked a “powerful response” to Iran’s attacks on US forces in the Middle East. But it stopped short of some recent threats US President Donald Trump made against Iran’s infrastructure, including bridges and power plants.
Trump said on Wednesday the United States would hit Iran “hard” after it launched five ballistic missiles at US forces in Jordan, a key American partner in the region. US forces, he said, responded with a Patriot air defence system, shooting down all five missiles.
“We’re going to smack ’em a little bit,” Trump said, adding he would “pretty much” always “hit back” after an adversary does.
Iranian officials said they had targeted a base in Jordan in response to undefined “aggressive actions by the US military”.
The latest exchange of hostilities marked a new interruption in efforts to reach a ceasefire deal – one that Trump has said Iran wants – to end the war, which has now entered its sixth month.
Dana Stroul, a senior Pentagon official during the Biden administration, said today that Trump and Iran appear “stuck”, with neither side seeing benefits to continuing the conflict or believing that negotiations to end it will yield a decisive outcome.
“There is increasing pessimism in both capitals about the inability of the sides to commit to a diplomatic agreement,” she said.
Stroul, now a research director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said it “almost seems like both sides continue to launch military strikes from a position of weakness”. Trump appears unwilling to launch major military operations that could threaten his base of political support in the midterm elections this fall, while Iran appears to see a “unique moment of maximum leverage”.
To date, 18 American service members have been killed and more than 600 wounded in the conflict.
Four US troops died this month after fighting with Iran resumed on July 8. Three suffered fatal wounds in a July 17 Iranian ballistic missile strike on a base in Jordan. Another was killed the following day during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone at a base in Iraq.
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