After nearly a month without a publicly-acknowledged U.S. attack on Iranian territory, the relative quiet amid the U.S.-Iran war broke down over the weekend, with the Strait of Hormuz again the flash point of the military confrontation. U.S. forces struck two Iranian launchers on Larak Island on Sunday, the first known American attack inside Iran since late July. U.S. Central Command said Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces were preparing rockets capable of dispersing naval mines into the Strait of Hormuz and described the strike as a limited action intended to remove an imminent threat to commercial shipping.
Iranian officials gave a very different account. The governor of Qeshm told IRNA that two people were killed and several others wounded in the attack. Iran’s Foreign Ministry called the strike a violation of the country’s sovereignty, while the Revolutionary Guards promised retaliation.
That retaliation came quickly. The IRGC said ballistic missiles and drones were launched against U.S. military facilities at Jordan: Muwaffaq al-Salti Air Base in Al-Azraq and King Hussein Air Base. Iran said the strikes targeted aircraft positions as well as technical and maintenance infrastructure. Jordan said its air defenses intercepted eight missiles entering its airspace, while initial U.S.-linked reports said “nearly all” incoming missiles had been intercepted and that no significant impact had been reported.
Iranian media have circulated videos showing missiles reaching their targets, while other footage from Jordan appears to show Iranian ballistic missiles passing through air-defense fire before explosions near Muwaffaq al-Salti Air Base. Low-resolution Sentinel-2 satellite imagery published later Monday also appears to show at least one possible impact site inside the base. The imagery is not detailed enough to determine what was hit or the extent of any damage, and higher-resolution satellite photographs will be needed to establish that conclusively.
The emerging evidence nevertheless complicates the initial impression that the Iranian attack was almost entirely intercepted. Jordan said its air defenses intercepted eight missiles, while President Trump later said all but one Iranian missile had been intercepted, claiming that the remaining missile was not targeted because it was not headed toward anything significant. There is still no independent confirmation of the IRGC’s claim that the base suffered heavy damage, but the available evidence suggests that at least one Iranian projectile may have reached Muwaffaq al-Salti.
Iran’s regular army separately said it launched dozens of explosive drones toward Al Minhad Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, targeting locations where U.S. personnel and helicopters are stationed. The UAE denied that Al Minhad itself had been struck, but confirmed that its forces intercepted an incoming drone from Iran over Emirati territorial waters. Iran’s claim that the base was successfully hit has not been independently verified.
The Revolutionary Guards also announced Monday that they had shot down a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper over the Strait of Hormuz, saying the drone crashed into the Persian Gulf. Iranian media reported the claim widely, but the United States has not publicly confirmed losing the aircraft.
Yet the most consequential development of the weekend may not have been any of these attacks. The IRGC said Monday that an unidentified supertanker attempting to use what Tehran considers an unauthorized route through the southern Strait of Hormuz struck two naval mines, caught fire and was immobilized. Iran has not identified the ship, its flag or its owner. CENTCOM has disputed the account, accusing the IRGC of spreading false information to intimidate commercial shipping.
While the incident has not been independently confirmed, the warning accompanying the announcement was explicit. The IRGC told shipping companies that vessels must follow Iranian navigation rules and warned that ships attempting to use alternative routes promoted by Washington could face similar consequences.
That goes directly to the heart of the dispute that triggered the latest round of fighting. Washington says U.S. forces completed mine-clearing operations in international shipping lanes last week and insists that the waterway is open. Tehran says the United States cannot simply declare Hormuz reopened and maintains that ships must comply with Iranian rules to transit safely.
The behavior of commercial shipping companies suggests that, whatever the competing claims, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains far from normal. Reuters reported that visible commodity-vessel traffic through the strait fell to roughly five ships per day over the weekend. The real number may be somewhat higher because some vessels are switching off their tracking systems, but traffic remains dramatically below normal levels.
Oil markets reacted accordingly. Brent crude rose more than two percent after the Larak attack, returning above $90 a barrel. Higher energy prices are also feeding into a problem far removed from the Persian Gulf: persistent U.S. inflation. With American inflation still well above the Federal Reserve’s two-percent target, another sustained oil-price increase could further complicate the Fed’s choices and increase the economic costs of the war for Americans.
The renewed fighting is particularly striking because it came just days after the Trump administration signaled that economic pressure, rather than another major military campaign, would be the centerpiece of its next effort to force Tehran to change course. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Washington expects to announce new secondary sanctions against Iran almost every week, beginning with financial institutions. He also said the United States would press other governments at the G20 to reduce their economic ties with Iran or risk secondary sanctions.
But the events of the weekend illustrate how difficult it may be to separate that economic campaign from the military conflict. Washington’s pressure strategy ultimately depends in part on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, while Tehran increasingly treats its ability to restrict the strait as one of its strongest remaining sources of leverage.
The risks are not limited to Washington. Iran has spent recent weeks trying to deepen cooperation with neighboring states while Pakistan, Oman and Qatar have worked to find a diplomatic formula that could restore safer navigation through Hormuz and create a path back toward negotiations. Even governments closely aligned with Washington have shown little appetite for an indefinite regional war. Attacking U.S. positions on the territory of those same neighbors complicates that strategy. Iran wants regional governments to resist American efforts to isolate it, but its retaliation now risks exposing those governments to the very conflict they have been trying to contain.
The UAE’s reaction illustrates the problem. Abu Dhabi accused Iran of violating its sovereignty after intercepting the incoming drone, even as senior Emirati officials continued to argue that the region needs a political rather than military solution.
President Masoud Pezeshkian appeared to acknowledge the risk of additional escalation before leaving Tehran Monday for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Iran, he said, “is not looking for war,” but would respond decisively to attacks, adding that continued instability ultimately harms every country in the region. President Donald Trump told Fox News that the United States would retaliate for Iran’s attacks on U.S. forces in Jordan. “We’re going to hit them hard,” Trump said. “There will be a response.”
A senior Iranian source with direct knowledge of Tehran’s decision-making then told Reuters that every new American attack would receive a response “dozens of times greater,” arguing that the strikes following the attack on Larak demonstrated that “no target in the region is beyond Iran’s reach.” The source also warned that conditions in the Strait of Hormuz would become more difficult for ships violating Iran’s navigation rules.
Yet the same Iranian source described the latest fighting as a “limited and contained confrontation.” Tehran appears to be trying to restore deterrence by threatening increasingly costly retaliation while still signaling that it does not necessarily want the latest exchange to become another sustained round of war.
In another provocative move, President Trump posted an AI-generated video depicting Kharg Island - the hub for most of Iran’s seaborne oil exports - being destroyed in a massive explosion. He posted separately, declaring that “Iran is officially a Failed Nation. IT IS DEAD!,” claiming without evidence that Iran had now killed 100,000 protesters and should be tried for crimes against humanity.
What began as Washington’s attempt to enforce its claim that Hormuz had been reopened now risks restarting the military escalation that the Trump administration had only days earlier suggested it wanted to replace with economic pressure. That leaves both governments confronting increasingly difficult contradictions. Iran wants to demonstrate that the United States cannot reopen Hormuz by force, while the United States wants to break Iran’s control by combining military and economic pressure.
The events of the past 48 hours suggest neither side has yet found a way to do that. The first direct U.S. attack on Iran in roughly a month has already produced Iranian strikes across the region, higher oil prices and explicit threats of another round of attacks from both Washington and Tehran. After several weeks in which regional diplomacy appeared to be creating some space between the two sides, the Strait of Hormuz has once again become the place where economic pressure, military deterrence and the risk of a wider war collide.