DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The U.S. military launched airstrikes Sunday targeting Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard to retaliate for the killing of American troops in Jordan, further widening the crossfire between the nations as they fight over Strait of Hormuz.
The strikes, now part of a weeklong campaign that has seen Iran strike U.S.-allied countries across the Middle East, comes as an interim deal seeking to find an end to the Iran war has collapsed.
The U.S. has targeted 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, home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
The U.S. military’s Central Command in its statement also said it hit “Iranian military coastal surveillance and air defense facilities, maritime capabilities and missile and drone storage sites.” It also said for the first time it specifically targeting the Guard, a key power base in Iran's theocracy that controls its ballistic missile arsenal.
Footage released by the U.S. military appeared to show strikes carried out by fighter jets and by Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from 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 now is 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 hospitalization, the U.S. military said.
Since the war began, 16 U.S. 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 U.S. strikes.
Nearly every Gulf Arab states has been targeted by Iran for retaliatory strikes, with a missile alert sounding Saturday in Saudi Arabia. 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 Saturday to the UAE. Quoting an anonymous official, Fars said 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 emphasized that the targeting of civilian infrastructure and civilian facilities in the region … constitute 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 for Tehran targeting their nations.
The secretary-general of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, Jasem Mohamed al-Budaiwi, accused Iran of war crimes for strikes on infrastructure and civilian facilities.
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 U.S. military is carrying out that plan, beginning first with coastal areas of Iran on the strait.
The U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. “covetousness, bullying, totalitarianism or brutality” would meet with a “devastating response.”
