No end in sight as US-Iran war escalates
The United States and Iran exchanged strikes aimed at infrastructure and military targets on Saturday as their battle over the Strait of Hormuz intensified.
The region has endured days of back-and-forth attacks in a conflict increasingly focused on control of the strait. The collapse of an interim ceasefire leaves no clear end in sight for the war that the US and Israel began more than four months ago.
The US Central Command said early Saturday that its seventh straight night of strikes had hit “surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage, and maritime capabilities.”
Kuwait said Saturday it intercepted Iranian missiles and drones and that a water desalination plant was struck, causing a fire, the second such attack in two days in the tiny desert nation, which depends on desalination for 90 percent of its drinking water.
Several firefighters and a worker were injured while battling two other blazes sparked by Iranian strikes, according to the Kuwait Fire Force.
Kuwait briefly closed its airspace in the morning due to missile threats, and Kuwait Airways said it was rescheduling most flights to and from the capital.
Iraq said it shot down attack drones over the city of Irbil. Jordan’s State-run Petra news agency said that the kingdom’s air defence systems had downed Iranian missiles, while air sirens sounded multiple times in Bahrain, according to the Government.
Iranian officials say recent US strikes have killed dozens of people and wounded hundreds in Iran. The US military also acknowledged that several more service members were injured.
Iran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic after the war started February 28. That sent the price of oil soaring and gave Iran significant leverage in negotiations. The price of oil rose Friday above $86 a barrel, close to its highest level in a month, as crossings through the strait fell to a three-week low, according to an international shipping tracker.
In an address to the American public on Thursday evening, Trump insisted the war was going well. “We are likewise winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly,” he said.
Before the war began, the US had been in talks with Iran over its nuclear program. Trump now faces political pressure to bring the war to a close and avoid the kind of prolonged Middle East conflict he had campaigned against.
US airstrikes hit an electricity and desalination plant in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, Iranian state television reported. The attacks hit Bonji, a village on Iran’s coast on the Strait of Hormuz.
Overnight strikes damaged two tunnels and a bridge, disrupting one of the main highways towards Bandar Abbas, a city which sits near the narrowest part of the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iran’s state-run news agency. Iran also reported strikes on the strategic Qeshm Island inside the Strait.
Iranian authorities said at least 46 people have been killed and more than 400 wounded in recent US strikes, including eight killed in a strike on a bridge Friday.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Saturday stepped up its warning that countries hosting US forces should be “prepared to receive a corresponding response,” according to Iran’s State TV.
US officials acknowledged 13 additional US service members - 10 Army soldiers and three Navy sailors - had been injured since Monday, but offered no further details. Since the war began, 14 US service members have been killed and 427 No end in sight as US-Iran war escalates wounded.
