Dubai, Jul 18: 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, an essential waterway that used to carry a fifth of the world’s crude oil. 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.”
The most significant damage on Saturday occurred in Kuwait after Iran struck a water desalination plant and an oil facility, according to the Kuwait authorities and the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation. Both declined to provide locations.
The strikes injured several people at the oil facility and caused a fire at the desalination plant, forcing several power generation units offline. It was the second attack against a desalination plant in two days in the tiny desert nation, which depends on desalination for 90 per cent 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.
Iran targets several Mideast nations
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 USD 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 labour 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.
Infrastructure hit in Iran
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.
The previous day, Iranian state media reported that the US hit highways and railway bridges, seemingly aimed at cutting off Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port, from roads leading into the Islamic Republic’s central region onward to Tehran, the capital.
Iran acknowledged “attacks on power infrastructure” during the US airstrike campaign for the first time Friday when its Energy Ministry issued a call for people to use less power in southern provinces “experiencing extreme heat.” The ministry did not specify what was hit.
Iranian authorities said at least 50 people have been killed and more than 500 wounded in US strikes in the past three weeks, including eight killed in a strike on a bridge Friday.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Saturday stepped up its warning that countries hosting U.S. forces should be “prepared to receive a corresponding response,” according to Iran’s State TV, as pro-Iranian protesters continued their nightly demonstrations in the capital, as they have done for more than 100 days.
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 wounded.
Strikes come as Iran and US vie for Strait of Hormuz
Iran has said the strait must be under its sole control and that vessels should pay fees to Tehran — even though the world for decades has considered it an international waterway.
Trump has returned in recent days to his threats to target Iranian power stations and bridges to try to compel Iran to loosen its hold on the strait, through which about a fifth of all oil and natural gas traded once passed in peacetime. The US also reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to halt its shipments of crude oil.
Crossings through the strait fell to a three-week low of just eight vessels on Thursday, according to MarineTraffic.com.
A growing amount of the region’s energy is being shipped through pipelines, but not nearly enough to offset the decline in shipping through the strait.
