Iran targeted the US military presence in the Gulf region in retaliation for US airstrikes on Iranian territory. The missile and drone attacks on US bases in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain coincided with Thursday, when Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was laid to rest in Mashhad.
US targets in the Gulf struck
The Iranian military announced in a statement to state media that it had attacked US Patriot systems in Kuwait, an early warning facility in Qatar, and a US Army fuel depot in Bahrain.
The Kuwaiti armed forces reported that they engaged a cruise missile, three ballistic missiles and 10 drones in their airspace, and that one person was injured by falling shrapnel.
In Jordan, missiles launched from Iran were also detected and sirens sounded. The Jordanian state news agency reported that eight missiles were intercepted, with no casualties or damage. Iran's Revolutionary Guards later announced that they had fired 10 ballistic missiles at the Azraq military base in Jordan and a US military control center in the Middle East.
US attacks in Iran
The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement on Wednesday that it had struck around 90 military targets in Iran, including air defense systems, coastal surveillance assets, and missile and drone storage areas. The strikes were said to be in retaliation for Iran's bomb attacks on ships.
Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency reported that several explosions were heard in Bushehr province and the southern port city of Bandar Abbas on Thursday morning. Bushehr is home to a Russian-built nuclear power plant. A local official later told state media that a US projectile had hit the facility's perimeter area. The same area had been struck repeatedly before the April 8 ceasefire.
Iranian state media announced that 14 people were killed and 78 wounded in five provinces during the US attacks on July 8-9. The Fars news agency reported that a US strike hit a railway bridge used for trade with Russia and China.
Khamenei's funeral and tension in the Strait of Hormuz
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a US airstrike on February 28, the first day of the war. After a week of mass funeral ceremonies, his body was laid to rest on Thursday at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad.
The naval forces of Iran's Revolutionary Guards announced that US attacks and interference with ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz had disrupted the gradual reopening of the waterway. The Guards said the number of ships passing through the strait under Iranian supervision had reached about 50 percent of pre-war levels in the past two weeks, and that only vessels using routes designated by Tehran were permitted. They warned that any new US intervention would trigger an "overwhelming response."
Iran's chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a post on X, "The Strait of Hormuz will be reopened only under Iran's arrangements, not with US threats."
Regional and international reactions
Qatar, which hosts the region's largest US base and frequently mediates, condemned the attacks on commercial ships and called for a return to diplomacy.
The foreign ministers of Turkey and Oman, in separate phone calls with their Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi, stressed the need to avoid military escalation. In a meeting with Pakistan's army chief, who has been mediating in the conflict, Araghchi condemned the US's "war-mongering policies."
US President Donald Trump said in a post on Truth Social, "This is in response to Iran bombing ships yesterday. If it happens again, it will be much worse!" However, Trump, who was attending a NATO summit in Turkey, also said he did not think the latest military strikes would turn into a full-scale conflict with Iran.
Speaking to reporters in Ankara, Trump said, "Everything that will happen will end very quickly... And it will make everything, including oil, safer." Asked before the NATO summit whether the memorandum of understanding with Iran had ended, he replied, "I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them."
