US strikes Revolutionary Guard as Iran conflict escalates across Gulf

By Jon Gambrell

Dubai — The US military launched airstrikes against Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard on Sunday in retaliation for the killing of American troops in Jordan, further escalating tensions between the two countries after an interim agreement aimed at ending their conflict collapsed.

The strikes are part of a weeklong campaign that began with a struggle over control of the Strait of Hormuz and has seen Iran strike US-allied countries across the Middle East.

The US has attacked bridges, electrical facilities and other targets in Iran, and Tehran has retaliated by hitting power and desalination plants in Kuwait, threatening daily life in that small, oil-rich desert nation. Iran also has stepped up its threats to further expand the strikes, drawing a warning overnight from the United Arab Emirates.

Kuwait and Bahrain again activated air defences Sunday morning as they warned of incoming Iranian drones and missiles.

Strikes degrade

The US military’s Central Command, in its statement, also said it hit “Iranian military coastal surveillance and air defence facilities, maritime capabilities and missile and drone storage sites”.

It said the attack was designed to degrade Iran’s ability to control the Strait of Hormuz and “swiftly punish Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces”, a key power base in Iran’s theocracy that controls its ballistic missile arsenal.

Footage released by the US military appeared to show strikes carried out by fighter jets and by Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from the sea. One target site appeared to be in a valley of a mountainous region. The Guard often has missile bases and other military equipment tucked into mountain ranges.

Iran has provided no overall information on its materiel losses in the American campaign, which is now in its eighth day as the nations vie over control of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil and natural gas traded passes in peacetime.

An Iranian attack on a base in Jordan killed two American service members, left one missing and four requiring hospitalisation, the US military said.

Since the war began, 16 US service members have been killed and over 430 wounded.

Iranian authorities said Saturday that at least 50 people have been killed and more than 500 wounded in the latest US strikes.

UAE warns

Nearly every US-allied Gulf Arab state has been targeted by Iran for retaliatory strikes. However, the United Arab Emirates has yet to be targeted.

The semiofficial Iranian news agency Fars, believed to be close to the Guard, issued a threat against the UAE on Saturday. Quoting an anonymous official, Fars said that continued strikes on Iranian civilian infrastructure would mean that the “airports of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, as well as the ports of Fujairah and Jebel Ali, must be immediately evacuated”.

Apparently responding to the threat, the Emirates’ foreign ministry issued a statement calling “for exercising the utmost restraint in order to avoid dangerous repercussions and the region being pulled into new levels of violence and instability”.

“The UAE emphasised that the targeting of civilian infrastructure and civilian facilities in the region … constitutes a flagrant and grave violation of the established principles and provisions of international law and cannot, under any circumstances, be accepted or justified,” the statement added.

During the Iran war, officials say both the UAE and Saudi Arabia carried out retaliatory airstrikes against Tehran for targeting their nations.

The secretary-general of the six-nation Gulf Co-operation Council, Jasem Mohamed al-Budaiwi, accused Iran of war crimes for strikes on infrastructure and civilian facilities.

Hormuz is key

Trump has threatened to target Iran’s power stations and bridges to try to compel Tehran to loosen its hold on the Strait of Hormuz. Recent attacks suggest the US military is carrying out that plan, beginning first with coastal areas of Iran on the strait.

The US in the past week also reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to halt its shipments of crude oil, and the military on Saturday said it had redirected five ships and disabled one since then.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, in a statement Saturday, warned of “unforgettable lessons” if the US keeps attacking the Islamic Republic. An Iranian negotiator said Tehran was suspending its commitments to the interim deal signed about a month ago and aimed at permanently ending the fighting.

Iran’s joint military command said that US “covetousness, bullying, totalitarianism or brutality” would meet with a “devastating response”.