The United States and Iran have returned to open war after a week of bombings and mutual accusations of violations of the ceasefire agreement signed last June 17. Not surprisingly, the U.S. president, Donald Trump, has notified Congress that his country is again at war with Tehran. In the early hours of Tuesday, Washington bombed numerous Iranian locations and the Islamic Republic attacked U.S. interests in neighboring countries as well as two ships in the Strait of Hormuz — where a sailor died — but the conflict also threatens to spread again to the Red Sea and Iraq.
The U.S. Central Command announced in a statement that it “successfully struck” military targets in Iran, “including in Bushehr, Chabahar, Jask, Konarak, Abu Musa, and Bandar Abbas” using “precision munitions against coastal defense systems and maritime capabilities” in order to reduce “Iran’s ability to attack commercial vessels.” The mentioned locations are on Iran’s southern coast or are islands in the Persian Gulf where important commercial ports, oil facilities, and, in the case of Bushehr, the country’s only civilian nuclear power plant are concentrated.
Iranian media have reported that at least four people were injured in Omidiyeh (Khuzestan province), while the Fars agency has confirmed that three people have died in Hormozgan province following the latest U.S. bombings. Since the night of last Tuesday when the U.S. resumed attacks on Iran, at least twenty people — civilians and military — have died and more than a hundred have been injured, according to the Ministry of Health.
The Revolutionary Guard meanwhile announced it had attacked U.S. military targets in Jordan and the Fifth Fleet base in Bahrain. “We have hit the U.S. enemy’s facilities with ballistic missiles at a base occupied by the army of child killers and thus punished the American criminals for their actions,” said this force parallel to the regular army in a statement. Jordan claimed to have intercepted four missiles launched over its territory.
For its part, the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Defense condemned the “shameless attack” by Iran on two tankers linked to the country. In these attacks, an Indian sailor died and eight others — two Ukrainians and six Indians — were injured, four of them seriously. This offensive, the statement criticized, “constitutes a serious violation and a breach of international law.”
The spokesperson for the Revolutionary Guard, Brigadier General Hossein Mohebi, justified the attack by saying these ships had violated the closure of the strait decreed by Iran over the weekend. “The two offending supertankers were deceived by the U.S. into using that route and turning off their navigation systems. They ignored repeated warnings from the Strait of Hormuz Security Center and preferred to pass through the mined route, so they were hit and disabled,” he explained. India has summoned the Iranian ambassador in New Delhi to officially protest this attack.
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But the conflict threatens to again exceed the Hormuz area. The Houthi government of Yemen, an ally of Iran, announced it had fired on Abha airport in Saudi Arabia after, on Monday, Sanaa airport was bombed by the rival Aden government — supported by Riyadh — when a plane from Tehran carrying a Houthi delegation that had participated in the funeral of the Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei was landing.
The Houthis have also threatened to resume their attacks on ships in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean and is therefore key for global trade. Already in the most violent phases of the U.S.-Israeli war offensive on Iran in March, the Houthis began attacking ships in the area, forcing many shipping companies to go around Africa.
A base in Iraq of the Kurdish-Iranian armed group PAK was also attacked during the past night, according to one of its leaders, Rebaz Sharifi. In March and April, numerous bases of these groups in northern Iraq were attacked by Iran and pro-Iranian Iraqi militias since the United States, influenced by Israel, came to consider them a tool to initiate a ground invasion of Iran.
The return to open war has pushed oil prices to their highest this month, rising from around 70 dollars per barrel of Brent crude to nearly 85 marked this Tuesday.
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