Iran War Live Updates: U.S. Launches Strikes After Iranian Attack Kills 2 American Soldiers

The latest deaths prompted retaliation from American forces, which began striking Iran early Sunday morning local time. The barrage was meant to “swiftly punish Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces who launched attacks against American service members in Jordan last night,” according to a Central Command statement posted to social media.

The United States and Iran have expanded the scope and intensity of their attacks, with no sign of an off-ramp to end the fighting.

Iranian state media reported on Saturday that bridges and roads in southern Iran were damaged and said that a water desalination plant in Jask was hit. It cited a local official as saying that about 10,000 people were facing water shortages. The U.S. military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on those claims.

Iran’s military has responded with attacks on American allies in the Middle East, targeting U.S. bases in the region.

On Saturday, Iranian missiles and drones pummeled Kuwait, where the government said another power and water treatment plant had been attacked — the second in two days — sparking fires. An oil facility was also struck, leading to injuries and “severe material losses,” according to Kuwait’s state-run petroleum corporation.

Air-raid sirens also continued to ring out in Bahrain on Saturday morning, warning of new Iranian strikes. And the Jordanian military said it had intercepted 10 Iranian ballistic missiles overnight.

The hostilities have failed to break the deadlock over the strait, a vital waterway for global oil and gas shipments that Iran has blockaded. Last month, the United States and Iran reached a cease-fire meant to reopen the strait and allow for broader negotiations. Iran, citing a clause in the agreement, has continued to assert control over the waterway, attacking ships trying to transit through routes outside its territory.

The United States has also reinstated its own blockade on Iranian ports. With no apparent negotiations taking place, the two sides appear to be sliding toward a wider war.

President Trump has repeatedly threatened to bombard Iranian infrastructure, including power plants and bridges, in an effort to force Iran’s leaders to make a deal and end the war. Analysts say there is little guarantee that stepping up attacks would force Iran to change course, and such attacks on critical infrastructure could constitute war crimes under international law.

Here’s what else to know:

• Supreme leader’s message: In a written message carried by state media, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei repeated Iran’s criticism of the United States as violating the cease-fire deal, calling Mr. Trump’s signature on their memorandum of understanding “worthless and invalid.” Read more ›

• Fear and isolation in Iran: The resumption of fighting has added to many Iranians’ misery, one resident of Ahvaz said, adding, “The situation has become unbearable.” Read more ›

• Lessons from past wars: Mr. Trump has struggled to convert American military might into a strategy that can bring victory in the war he began in late February alongside Israel. It’s a challenge the United States has faced again and again, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read more ›

Ismaeel Naar, Pranav Baskar and Shirin Hakim contributed reporting.

Jordan, which hosts major U.S. air bases, grew in importance in the run-up to and the early days of the war, as the Pentagon shifted a number of troops from Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to relatively more secure locations in Jordan and Israel. The country’s role in U.S. operations has only increased as other American allies in the region have restricted Washington’s ability to base troops in and fly aircraft over their territories, the U.S. officials said.

In early July, Iran widened its attacks in the region, including Jordan for the first time since Tehran and Washington signed a cease-fire agreement in June.

The U.S. officials offered a recounting of the last five days of Iran’s attacks on Jordan, which the Pentagon has not yet discussed in detail publicly.

The first attack to hit U.S. forces in Jordan struck a residential facility at King Faisal Air Base, wounding as many as five U.S. service members, they said. The second hit a base in eastern Jordan where U.S. Blackhawk helicopters were operating from, damaging a significant number of them.

Then, 48 hours ago, Iranian missiles hit Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Azraq, which is the same base where the troops were killed on Friday, the officials said. The earlier strike wounded about 20 U.S. troops rushing to take cover in bunkers. No one was killed in that barrage. But on Friday, when the Iranians struck the base again, two U.S. troops were killed and four other service members were injured, according to U.S. officials. Other personnel were evaluated for minor injuries and returned to duty.

The Pentagon declined to comment.

On Friday, the Iranian Army said it had launched a drone attack targeting fuel tanks at the U.S. base in Azraq. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps also said it had used missiles and drones to target aircraft shelters at the base, according to Fars News Agency, a semiofficial news outlet affiliated with the Guards.

Jordan’s location allows the United States to conduct “more efficient air operations across Syria, Iraq and the broader region,” said David Deptula, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who was a main architect of the 1991 Persian Gulf air war.

“Friday’s attack was therefore not just an attack on a base,” he said in an email on Saturday. “It was an attack on the U.S. regional coalition and an attempt to make the political cost of hosting American forces greater than the security benefit.”

The U.S. military announced on Saturday evening that it had launched retaliatory strikes to degrade Iran’s threat to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and to “swiftly punish Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces who launched attacks against American service members in Jordan.”

Even before those strikes, President Trump signaled that he planned to increase strikes on Iran in the next week and intended to hit more Iranian infrastructure, including bridges, electrical power plants and distribution systems.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

President Trump has repeatedly said he would avenge the deaths of any U.S. soldiers. About 1:30 a.m. local time on Sunday, American forces launched a new round of attacks in Iran, according to Central Command.

The two U.S. service members killed were active-duty Army soldiers, the official said.

In recent days, Iran has been mixing up its tactics for attacking U.S. personnel on bases in the region, the official said, using a combination of medium-range ballistic missiles and one-way attack drones in the hopes of overwhelming air defense systems.

Six Army soldiers were killed during a March 1 attack on the port of Shuaiba in Kuwait. Another service member died of injuries he suffered during a March 1 attack on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, and six Air Force personnel died when a KC-135 aerial refueling jet crashed in western Iraq on March 12.

The last known U.S. death from the war was a Navy helicopter pilot who was declared missing after an emergency landing in the Arabian Sea on July 1, which the Navy’s Fifth Fleet said was not believed to have been caused by enemy action. Days later, the Navy called off its search for the missing aviator.

The Pentagon’s casualty reporting protocols call for publicly identifying deceased service members only after 24 hours have passed since next of kin were notified. The names of troops wounded in action are not typically released.

More than 400 U.S. service members have been injured in the Iran conflict, according to the military’s Central Command, which directs military operations in the Middle East.

The command’s statement on Saturday said four American service members wounded in Friday’s attack were taken to Jordanian hospitals, and have been discharged.

More American troops received minor injuries and have been returned to duty, the statement said, but did not specify how many.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Minnesota.

Overnight strikes damaged a tunnel and three bridges, the Hormozgan governor’s office said on Saturday, according to Iran’s state news agency. The government urged residents to avoid unnecessary travel on the roads until further notice. Hormozgan Province, which includes Bandar Abbas, lies along the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian state media reported overnight that at least six areas had been targeted around the country, including Bandar Abbas, but also Ahvaz, the capital of the oil-rich Khuzestan Province about 500 miles northwest of the strait, as well as Lar and Darab, two inland cities in Iran’s southern Fars province. A water desalination plant in the southern province of Jask was also struck, according to Iranian state television. The U.S. military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on those claims.

By Saturday afternoon, some previously damaged traffic routes hit during the last several days of attacks appeared to have been at least partially restored, with Iranian state media reporting that passenger train traffic had resumed from the Bandar Abbas railway station and the opening of an alternative route to the east of the city.

The U.S. military said its overnight strikes had targeted “surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage and maritime capabilities.” It made no mention of civilian infrastructure, though President Trump has frequently threatened to bombard such sites, including power plants and bridges.

Nightly attacks in Ahvaz have become a familiar pattern, according to Emad, a 34-year-old trader there. “That said,” he added, “some people are still frightened by the explosions, especially those living closer to the targeted areas.”

Emad said that as far as he could tell, the strikes had targeted the city’s southeastern periphery, where there are military bases and installations, rather than its center.

Elnaz, a 30-year-old resident of Ahvaz, said Thursday night had been the worst night since the fighting resumed.

Her friends’ and family’s young children “were especially frightened,” she said. “The blast waves were so close that we thought if we stepped outside, we would find the entire city destroyed.”

Since then, the attacks have not been as severe, Elnaz said, but each night is unpredictable.

“None of us knows what kind of attack will happen once night falls,” she said. “We generally know that the strikes are aimed at military areas, but even bombing those locations is enough for the noise and shock waves to reach us and make our whole bodies shake.”

As is typical in Ahvaz during the summer even in peacetime, there are power outages every day, sometimes lasting more than two hours, she said. During power outages, water is also cut off. Temperatures in the city have reached as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit this week.

While stores in the city are still stocked, Elnaz said, they are largely empty of customers, because people have little money. Iran’s economy, long in malaise, has gotten even worse during the war, with skyrocketing food prices and companies forced to lay off workers.

The war has simply added to Ahvaz residents’ misery, she said, adding, “The situation has become unbearable.”

Kuwait’s state-owned oil company said on Saturday that one of its vital sites had also been targeted, with “repeated brutal Iranian attacks” resulting in a number of injuries and “significant material losses.” Those injured were given medical assistance, and the site was evacuated, the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation said in a statement carried by the national news agency.

Kuwait’s fire brigades were battling blazes at two separate sites that it said had been targeting, reporting that a number of firefighters and a worker had been injured. It did not specify the locations of the fires.

The strikes on Kuwait come more than a week after a cease-fire between Iran and the United States unraveled.

Iran has accused the United States of attacking Iranian roads and bridges, and on Saturday, state media said that a desalination facility west of the Strait of Hormuz, in the southern county of Jask, had been hit, and cited the head of a local water utility company as saying that it had left about 10,000 people without water. The United States has not publicly commented on the claim.

In Kuwait, the Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy said in a statement on Saturday that Iranian attack on the power and water desalination facility had caused a fire, and that some operations had been halted “for the safety of workers and sustainability of the electricity network.” The ministry urged citizens and residents to ration electricity until the afternoon as teams worked to repair the damage.

Kuwait’s electricity system that is already under strain. Despite its immense oil wealth and status as a major energy exporter, Kuwait has had to schedule power cuts to sustain its electrical grid during scorching summer months, when temperatures can reach up to 50 degrees Celsius, or more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The soaring demand during periods of extreme heat has outpaced the country’s generation capacity, straining the electricity grid and forcing periodic blackouts.

West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, was up 4 percent to $82 a barrel.

Oil prices rose as the Iran war, now in its fifth month, continued to disrupt the supply of energy. Just eight ships navigated the strait on Thursday, the second full day of the reinstated U.S. naval blockade of Iran.

Shipping activity was at its lowest level in more than a month, down from 13 ships the day before, according to Kpler, a maritime data firm. Most of the vessels that navigated through the strait on Wednesday and Thursday passed through the Tehran-mandated corridor in Iranian waters.

The United States carried out more attacks against Iran on Friday as the fighting continued for the seventh straight day.

The U.S. blockade on Iran is likely to severely hamper Tehran’s ability to monetize its control over the strait, as it did during the first blockade, which lasted from April until mid-June. During that period, U.S. forces redirected or disabled more than 149 ships, depriving Iran of billions of dollars in oil revenue.

U.S. Central Command said in a statement that as of Thursday, American forces had redirected three commercial vessels trying to evade the blockade, disabled a ship that did not comply and boarded another ship. The military said the boarding happened on a Cook Islands-flagged tanker, the Wen Yao.

Fuel prices have also continued to go up, with the average price of gasoline in the United States on Friday moving 4 cents higher to $3.98 a gallon and diesel up 5 cents to $5.06 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club.