The U.S. launched a new round of strikes on Iran Saturday after Iran was reported to have attacked two ships Saturday which attempted to travel through the Omani channel of the Strait of Hormuz without coordinating with the Iranian government, and the IRGC retaliated with strikes on U.S. bases in the region.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said Iran on Saturday “blatantly attack[ed]” the Cyprus-flagged container ship M/V GFS Galaxy. The IRGC’s naval forces announced the same day that the Strait of Hormuz would be “closed until further notice and until the end of US interference in the region, and no vessel would be permitted to transit.” The IRGC said that several ships, “encouraged by foreign actors,” attempted to transit via an “unauthorised route.”
CENTCOM responded with airstrikes they say targeted “Iranian missile and drone sites, naval capabilities, ammunition storage facilities, communication networks and coastal surveillance locations.” Saturday night’s airstrikes became the third wave of U.S. attacks on Iran this week.
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Iran released a list of targets they retaliated against, including the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Prince Hassan Air Base in Jordan, and various sites in Oman, Kuwait, and Bahrain, saying in a statement that “any continuation of aggression” by the U.S. “will be met with even more severe responses.”
Iran’s Saturday attacks on ships attempting to transit through the Strait of Hormuz without Iranian government coordination casts doubt over the veracity of Friday’s CBS News report that the Iranian government had “apologized” for previous attacks on ships in the waterway and would not attack ships again in the future. A senior Iranian official told Drop Site News Sunday that those leaks were “a very deliberate and coordinated media campaign designed to pressure” Iran into making concessions over its position that “Iran will not allow anyone to disrupt” what it called its “oversight management of the Strait of Hormuz.” The official said that the U.S. is also applying pressure on Oman and that the idea of opening an alternative lane through the Strait of Hormuz outside of Iranian management “actually came from the American side.”
