Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on Thursday it had struck an American airbase in retaliation for an early-morning US attack near Bandar Abbas Airport, in a sharp escalation of the US–Iran conflict.
“Following the aggression carried out at dawn today by the invading US military against a location on the outskirts of Bandar Abbas Airport using aerial projectiles, the American air base identified as the source of the attack was targeted at 4:50 a.m.,” the Guards’ public relations office said in a statement carried by Iran’s semi-official Fars and Tasnim news agencies. The IRGC did not say which base it had struck. The United States operates installations across multiple Gulf and wider Middle East countries.
The Guards described their response as “a serious warning” to Washington and said any repeat of what they called aggression would draw a “more decisive” reaction, placing responsibility for the consequences on the “aggressor.”
Around the same time, Kuwait’s army reported that its air defences were intercepting “hostile” drones and missiles, without specifying their origin. Three explosions were heard to the east of Bandar Abbas, a strategic Iranian port city and naval base near the Strait of Hormuz, in the early hours of Thursday morning local time.
A US official confirmed that the American military had shot down four Iranian drones and struck an Iranian ground control station in Bandar Abbas that was about to launch a fifth drone.
The exchange follows overnight US strikes on an Iranian military site that sent crude prices rebounding above $90 a barrel and came as Washington and Tehran were in talks aimed at ending a war that began on February 28. Earlier in the week, US Central Command had also carried out defensive strikes near Bandar Abbas, destroying mine-laying boats and a missile site, prompting Tehran to warn of painful retaliation against renewed US attacks in the Hormuz area.
The Hormuz corridor matters acutely for Sri Lanka, whose fuel cargoes transit the waterway. Colombo has watched closely as each round of hostilities ripples through tanker insurance, freight premiums and Brent prices.
