US carries out ‘heavy wave’ of strikes on Iran

By Nathan Morley

The United States has carried out a wave of air strikes against Iran in retaliation for an attempted ballistic missile attack on American forces on Tuesday, the US military said.

US Central Command said dozens of targets belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had been hit, in response to Iranian strikes on US bases in Jordan and on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, Iranian state radio reported that three people, including a two-year-old child, had been killed in the strikes on Qeshm island, with further locations hit in the south and west of the country. 

The strikes come during a week in which the conflict has widened, with the first publicly confirmed joint US-Saudi strikes on Iranian-backed proxy forces in Iraq.

The US and Iran have exchanged a series of strikes and counterstrikes since a ceasefire agreed in April collapsed in June. That truce had been intended to halt months of fighting between the two countries.

Meanwhile, Pakistan said on Thursday that it was continuing diplomatic efforts to ease tensions between Washington and Tehran, and called on both sides to return to the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding.

“The negotiations between the parties are ongoing to normalise the situation, particularly the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, and to de-escalate,” Tahir Hussain Andrabi, spokesman for Pakistan’s Foreign Office, told a briefing in Islamabad.