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Iran fired missiles and drones at Jordan on Wednesday, including at the Red Sea port of Aqaba, with Amman saying that they were intercepted. Explosions from some of the shoot-downs were heard in the southern Israeli city of Eilat.
It came as the United States and Iran exchanged fire across the Middle East, while officials in both nations called into question diplomatic efforts to stop the war as it threatened to again spin out of control.
The US launched an 11th night of airstrikes on the Islamic Republic overnight, hitting targets across the nation as air defense systems opened fire over the capital, Tehran. Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps vowed retaliatory attacks would continue.
Iran responded with missile and drone fire targeting Jordan’s port city of Aqaba, once again attacking just on the doorstep of Israel. The US has been using Israel’s main Ben-Gurion International Airport and other military bases to host its refueler aircraft and has put fighter jets at bases in the country, but Iran has been hesitant to strike for fear of bringing the Israeli military back into the conflict.
Missile alert sirens sounded in Aqaba, and Jordan’s military said it intercepted four missiles in the Iranian attack, while two others fell in uninhabited areas. Plumes of smoke could be seen overhead in Aqaba in videos filmed by people in the nearby Israeli port city of Eilat, where explosions were heard from the intercepts. Jordan said it also intercepted four Iranian drones.
There were no initial reports of injuries or damage in the attacks.
Iran has targeted Jordan several times in recent days amid an escalation in the conflict with the US. On Sunday, Israel launched interceptors when fragments from Iranian missiles fired at Aqaba potentially threatened Eilat.
The US military said earlier that it had completed an 11th night of strikes on Iran. The state-run IRNA news agency reported that explosions rocked Bushehr, East Azerbaijan, Hamadan, Hormozgan, Ilam, Khuzestan and Sistan and Baluchistan provinces. The US said its targets included aircraft hangars and drone storage sites.
A very dangerous precedent
US Central Command said it launched strikes with the aim of further degrading the Islamic Republic’s “ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.”
“Over the past three months, Iran has attacked more than 30 commercial vessels transiting the international waterway vital for regional and global trade,” CENTCOM said in a statement. “The unwarranted attacks have endangered hundreds of innocent mariners and undermined freedom of navigation.”
CENTCOM insisted that the Strait of Hormuz remains open to commercial shipping despite these attacks, touting the number of vessels and barrels of oil that have transited the key waterway since early May.
The Strait of Hormuz is the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil and natural gas traded passed in peacetime. Iran’s attacks on shipping in that waterway sparked the recent series of attacks, and the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels of Yemen are now threatening Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea as well.
The US, in response to Iran’s attacks, restarted a blockade of Iranian ports, turning around vessels engaged in trading Iranian oil.
Speaking at a regional summit in the Philippines, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio denounced Iran’s actions in the strait.
“If we create a precedent in the Middle East where a nation state can decide that they are going to control an international waterway, charge a toll and if you don’t pay them, blow up your ships, we have created a very dangerous precedent which will repeat itself in other parts of the world, including in this region,” he said.
Rubio said the United States is open-minded on the Middle East conflict and willing to engage, negotiate and settle differences with Iran, but Tehran is not serious about talks.
“If they’re serious, we’re serious. If they’re not, then we will do what’s necessary to protect our interests, and also the interests of our allies,” Rubio told his Southeast Asian counterparts in Manila, who have expressed serious concern about the renewed hostilities.
Meanwhile, Iran’s top joint military command said it will target the interests of the US and its allies if the US targets Iranian nuclear sites, Iran’s state media reported.
The statement by Iran’s Khatem al-Anbiya Central Headquarters came after US President Donald Trump said the US will be hitting the Pickaxe Mountain area “pretty soon.”
Pickaxe Mountain is an underground Iranian nuclear site that has seen activity in recent months, but has not been hit in strikes.
Soldier identified
The US also named the third soldier killed in an Iranian attack on a base in Jordan last week.
The soldier was identified as Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28, of Ozone Park, New York.
The confirmation brought the death toll to 18 US service members killed since the war began.
On Monday, the Pentagon identified Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, as the two other soldiers who were killed in Friday’s attack on a base in Jordan.
The soldiers were killed by Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks in the first troop deaths from direct Iranian fire since the opening days of the war. They were deployed to support a US mission against the Islamic State group, a US Central Command statement said.
US President Donald Trump will attend the dignified transfer of US military personnel killed in Iranian attacks in the Middle East on Wednesday, according to his public schedule released by the White House.
The ceremony will take place at Dover Air Base in Delaware at 11 a.m. local time, the White House said.
The number of wounded US personnel in the Iran war has grown to well over 500 troops, a US official told the Associated Press. The total is higher than the Pentagon’s official tally on the Defense Casualty Analysis System, which currently shows 482 wounded.
The US official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter with the media and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the system has a significant lag in reporting injuries. The official said that is a function of its design and not intentional.
The post Iranian missiles target Jordan, interception explosions boom over Eilat appeared first on The Times of Israel.
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