U.S. launches new airstrikes to ‘swiftly punish’ Iran for troops’ deaths

DUBAI — The U.S. military said it carried out new airstrikes against Iran early Sunday to “swiftly punish” its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for an attack in Jordan that killed two American service members and left one missing and four hospitalized.

The strikes were designed to further degrade Iran’s ability to restrict the traffic of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Central Command said. The waterway accounted for roughly 20% of global oil supplies before the war.

The new strikes came after the U.S. military announced its first troop deaths from direct Iranian fire since the opening days of the war, resulting from a drone and missile attack Friday on a base in Jordan. The dead were not identified, and Central Command wouldn’t offer any further details on the deaths.

Since the war began Feb. 28, 16 U.S. service members have been killed and more than 430 wounded.

Strikes reported in southern Iran

An area near Sirik, on the Strait of Hormuz, was targeted around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency, which cited authorities in southern Hormozgan province.

A location near Hajiabad, in the same province, was also targeted, and explosions were heard in the port city of Bandar Abbas, according to IRNA. An area near Qeshm Island, inside the strait, was also targeted, according to Iran’s state-run broadcaster IRIB.

In neighboring Iraq, a base of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, an Iranian Kurdish dissident group, near Irbil was struck by a drone early Sunday, wounding eight of its members, according to Rebaz Sharifi, a military official with the group.

Residents of Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s semiautonomous northern Kurdish region, also heard explosions from air defenses early Sunday.

Irbil has been targeted by drone attacks multiple times over the last four days, which coincided with a visit by new Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi to Washington this week and the ongoing escalation between the U.S. and Iran.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but in the past both Iran and Iran-backed Iraqi militias have launched attacks in the Kurdish region, where U.S. troops and armed Kurdish Iranian dissident groups are present.

Iran’s leader warns of ‘unforgettable lessons’

Minutes before the U.S. announced the troop deaths Saturday, Iran’s supreme leader had warned of “unforgettable lessons” if the United States keeps attacking the Islamic Republic.

The remarks read out on state TV and attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei, still unseen since the war began, also called President Trump’s signature on any agreement “worthless and invalid.” An Iranian negotiator said Tehran was suspending its commitments to the interim deal signed with the U.S. last month and aimed at permanently ending the fighting.

Tehran’s declarations snapped another fragile thread as the war shows no end in sight. The deal was aimed at permanently ending the fighting. Now Khamenei warns of “lessons” not only from Iran but its armed proxies in the region, which Iran refers to as the “Axis of Resistance.” The U.S. issued a global travel alert over the rising tensions.

The battle has focused on control of the Strait of Hormuz. The widening strikes threatened civilians and services to them, including desalination plants for drinking water, while the global economy again was on alert.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, said on state TV that the U.S. has violated its commitments under the deal that was signed about a month ago, and now Iran is “no longer implementing them.”

There was no new word on mediation efforts.

U.S. soldiers face growing risks

The last recorded death of a U.S. service member was that of a helicopter pilot who crashed in the Arabian Sea earlier this month. Early in the war, an Iranian drone strike on a command center in Kuwait killed six soldiers. One soldier died after an attack on a base in Saudi Arabia. Six were killed when a refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq.

On Saturday, the most significant damage from Iranian strikes occurred in Kuwait, where a water desalination plant and an oil facility were hit, according to Kuwaiti authorities and the Kuwait Petroleum Corp. Both declined to provide locations.

It was the second attack against a desalination plant in two days in the tiny desert nation that depends on desalination for 90% of its drinking water. The strikes injured several people at the oil facility and caused a fire at the desalination plant, forcing several power generation units offline.

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 because of missile threats, and Kuwait Airways said it was rescheduling most flights to and from the capital.

Meanwhile, Iraq said it shot down attack drones over the city of Irbil. Jordan’s state-run Petra news agency said the kingdom’s air defense systems had downed Iranian missiles, while air sirens sounded multiple times in Bahrain throughout the day and in Saudi Arabia in the morning, according to their governments.

The secretary-general of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, Jasem Mohamed al-Budaiwi, accused Iran of war crimes for strikes on infrastructure and civilian facilities.

Attacks on desalination plants and other civilian sites, by both the U.S. and Iran, may be considered war crimes under the Geneva Convention and other international law.

U.S. strikes Iranian infrastructure

The U.S. Central Command said early Saturday that its seventh consecutive night of strikes hit “surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage, and maritime capabilities.”

U.S. airstrikes hit an electricity and desalination plant in Hormozgan province, Iranian state TV reported. IRNA said the Bonji desalination plant was destroyed, cutting off water supplies to about 10,000 people, and a desalination plant on strategic Qeshm Island inside the Strait of Hormuz was damaged.

Overnight strikes damaged two tunnels and a bridge, disrupting one of the main highways toward Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port that sits near the narrowest part of the strait, according to IRNA. The news agency said three bridges were hit Saturday, including one on a route to Bandar Abbas.

Iran acknowledged “attacks on power infrastructure” during the U.S. airstrikes for the first time Friday when its Energy Ministry issued a call for people to use less power in southern provinces “experiencing extreme heat.” It did not specify what was hit.

Iranian authorities said at least 50 people have been killed and more than 500 wounded in U.S. strikes in the last three weeks, including eight killed in a strike on a bridge Friday. Since the start of the war, more than 8,000 Iranians have been killed, including 1,738 civilians, according to the website Iran War Live.

Struggle over the strait

Iran essentially closed the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic after the war started with U.S. and Israeli strikes Feb. 28. That sent the price of oil soaring and has given Tehran significant leverage in negotiations.

Iran has said the strait must be under its sole control and vessels should pay fees to Tehran, even though the world for decades has considered it an international waterway. It fired on ships in recent days. Crossings through the strait fell to a three-week low, according to an international shipping tracker.

Trump has resumed threats to target power stations and bridges to try to compel Iran to loosen its hold. The U.S. in the last week reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to halt its shipments of crude oil, and the military on Saturday said it had redirected five ships and disabled one since then.

Before the war began, the U.S. had been in talks with Iran over its nuclear program. Trump now faces political pressure to end the war and avoid the kind of prolonged Middle East conflict he had campaigned against.

Gambrell, Ezzidin and Toropin write for the Associated Press and reported from Dubai, Cairo and Washington, respectively. AP writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran; Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv; Stella Martany in Irbil, Iraq; and Matt Lee and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.