The US Central Command (CENTCOM) has said that it completed its latest wave of strikes against Iran.
US forces “ended an evening wave of strikes against Iran at 9 p.m. ET on July 15,” CENTCOM said on the US social media platform X.
“US forces struck Iranian command centers, air defense sites, missile and drone capabilities, and coastal surveillance facilities to further degrade Iran's ability to threaten innocent mariners crewing commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz,” it said.
It added that CENTCOM used “precision munitions to hit targets in multiple locations including Bandar Abbas.”
The latest strikes follow a re-imposition of a US naval blockade of Iran’s ports, while Tehran threatened to shut off more regional energy exports, saying it was engaged in an "existential war" with America.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said early on Thursday that missiles and drones struck US military assets at Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait.
In a statement carried by Iranian state media, the IRGC said the strikes targeted a C-RAM early warning radar system and a US troop assembly point during what it described as the eighth wave of its Nasr 2 operation.
The statement said the attacks came in response to overnight US strikes on southern Iranian cities and coastal areas.
The IRGC also accused Washington of using Kuwaiti territory to launch attacks on Iran and called on Kuwaitis to expel US forces from their country.
'Existential war'
Following the latest round of strikes, Iran's Mehr news agency said four locations around the city of Ahvaz came under attack, just inland from the northern end of the Gulf, as did Bandar Abbas, Iran's principal port city on the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian state broadcaster IRIB reported that the US attacks struck near a hospital in Ahvaz that houses a pediatric cancer centre, forcing the temporary evacuation of the hospital. Families have come out to the streets around the hospital to care for their children, IRIB said.
After the initial wave, which Iran said hit a location on its Hengam Island in the strait, Tehran's top negotiator, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, issued a statement declaring that Iranian security depended on maintaining what he called "Iranian arrangements" in the strait.
"We are in an essential and existential war with America," Qalibaf said.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Wednesday it had struck US military targets in the region, including in Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan.
