US military carries out fresh strikes on Iran, prompting Iran attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain

US military carries out fresh strikes on Iran, prompting Iran attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain.

US strikes on five Iranian provinces over the past two days killed at least 14 people and injured 78 others, the Iranian Health Ministry said Thursday. "The United States targeted five provinces of Iran with attacks on July 8 and 9," Hossein Kermanpour, head of the ministry's Public Relations and Information Centre, wrote in a post on the US social media company X. He said the strikes had so far resulted in 14 deaths and 78 injuries.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Thursday condemned the US attacks on several areas in the southern coastal provinces and two bridges in the eastern provinces along the railway route to Mashhad, and, as per IRNA, described them as flagrant war crimes and a violation of the UN Charter and the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The Ministry stated that the attacks were "carried out under the false pretext of responding to alleged incidents involving a few vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday".

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on Thursday it launched a missile strike targeting the US command-and-control centre in West Asia and the Al-Azraq Air Base in Jordan. In a statement carried by Fars News Agency, the IRGC said its Aerospace Force fired 10 ballistic missiles targeting the two sites. Jordan earlier said that its air defences intercepted and downed eight missiles launched from Iran toward the kingdom.

France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Iran had brought new US attacks upon itself by violating a truce deal. "It was Iran that, by targeting ships sailing in Omani waters, violated its own commitments as well as international law," Barrot said to TF1 television when asked about the latest US strikes. "Iran violated the agreement reached with the United States" last month, Barrot added.

"US Central Command forces have started conducting additional strikes against Iran to further degrade their ability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz," CENTCOM wrote on X. "The United States is holding Iran accountable for recent unjustified aggression against commercial shipping and civilian crews freely navigating a vital international waterway."

Trump reinforced his message when speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One, returning from a NATO summit in Turkiye. "We just hit them very hard, and I say we hit them 20 to one. Every time they hit us, we're going to hit them 20," Trump told reporters. "And we did it last night. They did a little something today, but it was really retribution for last night."